I’d be willing to bet that almost all of you who are reading this now love bluegrass music. And I’ll bet that most of you also like to play bluegrass music. And most of you have surrounded yourselves over your years of enjoyment with various accoutrements that enhance the experience of your musical journey.
I am made of the same cut of cloth as you. I’ve bought just about every pick and string winder and electronic tuner out there in my quest for bluegrass bliss. But there is one gizmo in my gig bag that goes sadly ignored. Like most of you I avoid the hard stuff. I just want to have fun and playing bluegrass gives you so much of that. Why should we have to work? Just let the music flow, I say.
Buy my ignored piece of equipment keeps calling me. It tells me that if I had the discipline to make use of it I could be a much better player. Why don’t I make use of this basic piece of equipment more regularly?
With these thoughts in mind, I reached into my gig bag the other day in an effort to improve my playing. I fished around for a while and eventually retrieved the object of my interest, an electronic metronome. The last time I remembered using it was when I took a bass class with Lisa Burns. I was the boom and the metronome was the chuck. A useful exercise, Maybe this same rigorous exercise in rhythm could improve my mandolin or guitar picking.
I flipped the switch and was disappointed to hear not much more than a weak click or two. It seems my metronome is so badly ignored the it now needs a new battery. I went shopping for groceries today and meant to buy a new battery but alas, I forgot. Ignored again our little mechanical friend so willing to give us the key to the soul of our playing.
For rhythm is everything in music. If you don’t have that part down, you don’t have music at all. Your metronome is a tool that can help you find a more consistent rhythm. Why wouldn’t you make use of that tool? I stand accused and convicted.
Metronomes are great but I am not an advocate of metronomic rhythm on every tune. The best rhythm is a groove arrived at by musicians who are attuned to each other in a special way. They might take a shade off one quarter note and add a bit to the next for a swing rhythm. If the rhythm is not quite metronomic that’s OK as long as the players are all on the same page.
But staying on the same page requires that each musician has a sense of where the beat really is (metronomically). When I practice on my own I think I know where the beat is because I am totally in control of where the music is going. It sounds OK to me. But add another musician or two or three and what happens? Your so called sense of rhythm is relative. You have to adjust.
That’s why practicing with a metronome is so important, I think. Even when you are practicing by yourself you need an objective benchmark. You need a colleague who will not lie about where the beat is. It may not have the swing you want for that particular tune (some metronomes can actually be programmed for a swing rhythm) but the metronome will not lie to you as long as the batteries are fresh.
That reminds me. I need to buy some new batteries tomorrow.
