Why Practice Drums With a Metronome?

Why Practice Drums With a Metronome?

by Daniel N. Brown

Practicing with a metronome will improve your time
keeping dramatically! What... you say you can already
keep time? Try to keep time with a metronome for about
twenty seconds. It will show you how good you really
can keep time. If you have never tried it...try it! You
will see there is room for improvment.

In order to be an outstanding drummer you'll need to
keep good time, and practicing with a metronome can
help you do that. A metronome can improve your time
keeping almost by magic. And, we know how important
time keeping is, particularly for a drummer.

You may wonder what the big deal is and think, "No one
is gonna be able to distinguish any small changes in
tempo in the middle of a song." Well, that may be true,
but the major importance of keeping good time is at
three different places in a song...

1) The times when you break away for a fill and come
back to the original rhythm.
2) If the song contains pauses and later returns to the
original rhythm.
3) If the song contains different tempos and returns to
the original rhythm.

A metronome is such a vital tool in music education
that most teachers of guitar, piano, and violin all
utilize the power of metronomes within their lessons.
How then, even more important for the time keeper of a
band to practice with a metronome.

I can't strees enough the importance of practicing with
a metronome. Once you go out and invest in one, start
out by setting it at 80 beats per minute and play along
with a standard 4/4 disco beat. This is a good pace to
begin. It will give you enough time between beats to
concentrate and land your beat in sync with the beat of
the mertonome.

You will see that when you first start practicing with
a metronome it can become very discouraging, but then
you will eventually get the hang of it and keep pretty
good time. Then it may become a little boring. It's at
that point where you must challenging yourself a little
bit more.

Adjust your metronome to a few more beats and increase
your speed. Not so much where you will sacrifice your
form, though. You don't want to become sloppy. Once you
feel like you are really getting good at staying in
sync with the metronome using a 4/4 beat and at various
speeds you should begin to practice a variety of
different rhythms, also at various speeds.

Practicing with a metronome will improve your drumming
dramatically, so if you don't have one, get one. You
will be amazed at how much it will increase your level
of playing.