Metronome Games to Upgrade your Time
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Good time and rhythm can be elusive. However, I think everyone can agree that working with a metronome is paramount to developing these skills. As a percussionist, I have probably spent a majority of my life with the ring of a metronome in my ears, and have found some ways to make practicing with a metronome a bit more fun and a lot more effective. For two of these games, a regular metronome or metronome app will do. I really like the DB-90 Dr. Beat Metronome. This is great for personal use and marching band rehearsals. For a digital app, my favorite is Pro Metronome, which I use almost every day for personal use. The last two games requires other apps.
Metronome Game #1: Take away beats
If you usually put the metronome on quarter notes and start practicing, this game will bring a new level of difficulty. Instead of quarter notes, try half notes, whole notes, every two measures, and so on. I like to refer to this as working on macro time, which is testing how well you can keep tempo in a large duration of time. My experience with this is that the further apart the beats, the worse I realized my time was. However the more I did this, the more secure I felt.
I learned about this idea from hearing a story about the percussionist Josh Jones. In this story, I heard that he was able to play the entirety of snare drum etude and perfectly line up his performance with the first beat of the first measure and the downbeat of the final bar. While this story may be overexaggerated (I have not gotten any sort of confirmation that this is true), this dude is an absolute beast and totally worth checking out.
Metronome Game #2: Add some beats
If game #1 worked on macro time this is all about micro time! In this game, find the highest subdivision you need to play and put that on your metronome. One example of this is when I would work on snare drum etudes I would put the sixteenth note subdivision on. This would allow me to hear exactly where my time and rhythm are wavering. Maybe I’m a touch slow going from eighths to sixteenths or my left hand is slightly ahead of that beat after a buzz roll.
Regardless, the best part about doing this religiously, is that I found myself hearing the in my time without the metronome. This became a powerful tool for me, helping improve my ears’ sensitivity to rhythmic accuracy.
Metronome Game #3: Randomize Beat Drop-Offs
This is a super fun game, that is available on Pro Metronome. On the app, it is called rhythm trainer and it allows you to mute random beats while practicing. The great part about this feature is that it’s customizable. Thanks to the slider you can increase and decrease the number of muted beats while practicing. I would often start a practice session for drumset with almost nothing muted, and gradually increase the number of dropped beats through the session.
Another way I have used this is when I am shedding a short excerpt like the snare drum part on Lt. Kije. Every single rep I would move the slider to the right until I felt super comfortable with my sense of time. For another tip on conquering Lt. Kije check out this post, with advice on improving snare drum facility.
Metronome Game #4: Create a play-along!
This is another game I took from the amazing Josh Jones. Using the app Synkd, you can plug in the exact rhythm you want to practice, and play along with it on a loop. In a way, this mimics what it is like playing on a drumline, where it is of the utmost importance every single member of the line plays exactly in time together. I use this a ton to shed difficult snare drum licks, often breaking down a measure into various skeletal versions of itself and inputting these versions into Synkd to play along to.
If you are practicing a piece that involves playing with other people, another fun way to use this app is to input the other person’s part and play along to that. I used this a ton when practicing intricate rhythmic music such as Water by Alejandro Viñao. For example, I have issues playing in time signatures like 5/16 and in this piece, there are multiple places with equally difficult rhythmic changes. By practicing my part with what I would hear in an actual performance setting, I gained comfort when approaching these sections in rehearsal.
Game #5: Play to a Drumset Groove
I can’t lie and tell you that I love playing with a metronome. It can pretty boring and sometimes obnoxious, especially during long practice sessions. However, one way to break up the monotony is to play along to drumset grooves! My favorite app to do this is Drum Genius. It has a crazy extensive library of grooves including Jazz, Hip-Hop, Salsa, Rock, and much more. You can also change the tempo of these grooves by plus or minus roughly 25%, which is super useful.
This can be an amazing tool to improve your time, but for me, the more important aspect is that I was able to learn and develop feel. Being able to play with legendary drummers like Clyde Stubblefield on James Brown’s Cold Sweat, is an awesome way to improve your feel, time, and rhythm!
Try these out!
While this is certainly not the most extensive list, implementing these games has helped me make practicing more fun, and improved my time when performing! If you want to check out more tips to improve your next practice session, check out my previous post with four techniques to learn a difficult lick of music.
