My piano teacher isn't keen on my using a metronome as she'd rather I got to grips with timings myself. But I find the metronome really useful, especially for warm up exercises where I get faster and faster and often play the crochets/quavers/semiquavers at the same speed.

In life, generally, I have a good sense of timing eg when I was a rower I was known as a safe pair of hands in the stroke seat for keeping timing like clockwork and easy for the rest of the crew to follow.

But on the piano ..... I'm a bit all over the place. What do you all think? Are metronomes a lazy way to get a sense of rhythm established???

I think metronome is really useful provided that you don't get too reliant on it; it's quite easy to just let the metronome "count" for you and you'll never get grip with the rhythm. I'm guilty of this myself I could play in perfect timing with the metronome on but once it's off I simply can't always play at consistent speed. What my teacher suggested I do is just to use the metronome to establish the "correct" speed at the beginning and to double check from time to time but always practice without.

I think sometimes we can be too obsessed about trying to play a piece at absolutely one speed, though. So long as you maintain a good sense of rhythm I think you could get away with a tiny bit of flexibility if it helps with interpretation. I was just listening to a Brendel recording of the Haydn Sonata in E flat and he definitely didn't maintain the same speed throughout (and I'm playing that so I know it's definitely not in the score!)

Edit: If you're really Grade 0 as per your signature, then ignore my last paragraph! It is extremely important to get a grip with timing when you're staring out

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I use it to check what speed I should be playing at. Often to set a lower speed for a new piece and then I make a note on the music so I can built up the speed as I get to know it. But I wouldn't play right through with the metronome. It would sound so dull and lifeless. It's the subtle variations in speed which make it a human performance and not a computer-generated one.

But for a beginner a metronome is really useful to sort out the basics. Even better is to count out load to it while playing (if you can).

Have you tried walking the beat and singing (even if only in your head)?
This way you feel how it fits which is better than just listening to the metronome.
I wouldn't often use the metronome with a beginner but explore other ways of learning about timing.
Don't worry about it being difficult, there are an awful lot of things to think about when you start out and getting them all to work at the same time is not easy.
Is your teacher doing some work with you on this to give you some strategies for getting to grips with this?

Always! It's great because it forces you to keep the momentum going. Only really use it though once I know the piece well enough to check I am not taking the hemi-demi-semi-quavers or related objects too slow (or the fact that I am taking the quavers too fast, say).

I believe it is a very useful means to achieve an end ... and that is what it should remain: a means. However, I find it is useful for scales, arpeggios, technical exercises, etc. while for repertoire, it may be helpful in understanding the tempo the composer wanted to give the piece; once that has been understood, I think the metr. should be dropped (and you may return to it every now and then to double-check your tempo has kept fine).

I have a pretty steady inbuilt sense of pulse now, and know immediately if a classical piece is speeding up or slowing down - or wavers in some way. But I wasn't always like that, and I honestly think that it was playing with the metronome that helped. Obviously you need to know the notes well in order to play with it, but it's well worth slowing right down to a manageable tempo in order to 'check' that some bits of a piece aren't being cemented in at a quicker tempo than others. Once you've got it at a steady tempo, then it's time to learn to trust your own good taste with regard to letting the music breathe and so on, but in classical music, anyway, a steady pulse has to be there first. (I would never use the metronome now with Romantic music, unless there was a very awkward couple of bars, in which I really had to spend some time making sure I was getting the timing right at all - but I wouldn't play with it.)

Interesting comment.
A certain clarinet teacher (who will remain nameless ) has said on more than one occasion that I have a tendency to play the clarinet like a pianist which means that I don't always give enough tmie for breathing.
Having thought about that I'm now thinking about playing the piano like a clarinettist by giving the music more breathing space.

A metronome is medicine - not part of a staple diet

I often use metronomes to begin with, and then once I'm confident I will play my scales and peices steadlily...I start playing without it. It's good to go back occasionally and check whether you are being consistent though. It's really important to use the metronome in pieces where you have a tendency to go slow in the diffucult passages and fast in the easier parts. Overall I find that metronomes help me build consistency!

I agree with Juan Carlos - the metronome is a means to an end.

I don't think using a metronome is "lazy", whatever level you're at. You have a sense of rhythm: the metronome is just a tool to make you aware of what that sense is doing. Sometimes your rhythmic sense contradicts the metronome for very good reasons - but sometimes it's for less good reasons!

For example, I used to have a terrible tendency when learning pieces to vary the tempo, not according to what sounds best, but according to whether that particular bar is a hard one to play. Enthusiasm for the 70% I could play properly made me gloss over the other 30% where I'm struggling and the time goes out of whack to give me space to at least hit the right notes.

Practising with a metronome makes me aware of what I'm doing - so I still have that tendency, but it's much more obvious when I'm attempting to go out of time for no better reason than that a particular bit of the piece isn't really secure yet (or, in the opposite direction, speeding up when the music gets exciting, which can be a good thing, but isn't always). Bad news - that means I have to lift that bar out for special attention and do lots of repetitive work on it. But it's not the metronome's fault.

I can see your teacher's point - you can't build up your sense of rhythm by trying to learn it from a clockwork machine. But listeners to music (including you hearing yourself while you play) do respond to regular rhythm - slowing down or speeding up has a huge effect on them: it means something, and the metronome is just a critic which allows you to figure out whether you really mean to do this or not. Playing without a metronome and then playing in the same way with a metronome tells you a lot - not how you're going "wrong" in deviating from the strict clockwork time, but whether these deviations are "wrong" or "right" - which is entirely up to you to decide.

I certainly need this critic to remind me exactly what I'm doing!

I think that metronomes are good for tricky timing passages when you are trying to get all the semiquavers for example into a quick time. It's quite good for exercises and warmups, I think it's your choice really.

After nearly 70 years learning music, I still use a metronome from time to time. It tells you what a composer or an editor (important to know which) thinks is a possible speed for the music. It allows members of a chamber group to prepare separately for rehearsals. It identifies the parts of a movement on which you need more practice.

I have also occasionally been in a chamber group that has used a metronome in rehearsal, to sort out the coordination of a tricky passage, especially when some of the parts have complicated rhythms. There are three major problems that you have to overcome to make this a success. The first is that one of the members of the group may refuse to try it; my main response to that is to avoid playing with that person in future. The second is getting everyone to play quietly enough to hear the metronome tick; an ideal solution would be an electronic metronome with output to an amplifier and speaker, but I have never yet had that available. The third is getting everyone to listen to the metronome and not to one of the other players. If all these are solved, the process, sometimes with much repetition, usually leads to the cause of the problem (usually someone misreading a rhythm) being discovered and ideally everyone learning what to listen for so as to keep the ensemble tight. This process is less likely to be necessary when there is a pianist playing from a score in the ensemble, but in some works it may be convenient for the pianist to use a part, so as to have fewer page turns.

I find working with the gnome extremely useful - it is certainly not lazy! Invaluable for establishing tempo, working out tricky rhythms, highlighting problem areas to be worked on out of context and WITHOUT the metronome, or just for 'holding it there' on the run up to a performance. What you are playing will certainly have an impact on how you use the metronome, for obvious reasons! Good to practise with and without it.

I agree - I often use it to check the tempo marking, and occasionally I play through an entire piece with the metronome just to check there are no unintended accels. or rits! It's possible to lose speed/gain speed without realising and a metronome can highlight the point at which this happens.

I think that if you can't play the correct rhythm without a metronome, you won't suddenly be able to play the correct rhythm with it. But that could well differ from other people's experiences. I think it's a useful tool and it seems strange to me to recommend using it either all the time, or never.

I love my metronome and have several, but I have recently discovered that is far more enjoyable to play pieces with one of the rythm setting on the digital piano - play along with a drum beat!! Although, I was playing a bach prelude the other day and it sounded rather odd, at least the tempo was steady!

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I find if I have my metronome going whilst I am trying to play it knocks me off my rhythm completely. I tend to listen to the metronome first to find out my speed and then turn it off. My 11 year old son loves to play the piano with the metronome. Strange isn't it? What can be a good tool for some is a distraction for others.

Obviously I've never heard you play, but if a pupil of mine described that problem to me I would suggest that their rhythm wasn't spot on, otherwise there wouldn't be a problem introducing the metronome.

I often find on the oboe that I can suddenly play a rhythm correctly with a metronome. I think this is because my rhythmic ability is beyond my playing ability. I'm not sure if I'm being very clear; with a lot of rhythms I can tap them correctly or play them on the piano correctly but on the oboe I very often get side-tracked by breathing, having the metronome forces me to play what's written rather than what makes it easier to get a breath in. (Although this is obviously irrelevant in a piano thread).



As a teenager I went through a stage where I couldn't start with a metronome - I would become mesmorized by the ticks and be incapable of playing a note. My teacher eventually solved this by counting out loud a bar with me until I got confident enough first to count out loud the bar by myself and then to count it in my head.

I think with relative beginners the metronome can be useful to establish a pulse. My daughter has a rather unsteady pulse and after playing a piece several times with a metronome to give her a pulse she can then play it accurately without.

I need to use the metronome when sorting out one of those difficult rhythmic problems where long notes are tied to dotted notes, followed by very short notes, for instance. Having only one line of music means I can't rely on an accompanying rhythm to guide me, as happened when I played the piano.

I also didn't get a proper internal sense of the beat until I started using the metronome during practice - and we're talking twenty seven years with very limited ability to count here...