Category: Backstories

Popular High-Quality Mechanical Metronome

One of the practice techniques I teach all of my students is the “metronome trick.” It’s quite simple: If you run into a passage in a piece that you can’t play at the speed of the rest of the piece, you need to slow way down, and play it with a metronome to keep your pace. Typically, the initial tempo I recommend is 1/2 of the performance tempo, but for especially difficult passages, an even slower tempo might be better. You then play the passage at the slower tempo until you have it solidly “under your fingers” at that speed. Then you set the tempo higher by one or two “notches” (or beats, if you have an electronic metronome), and repeat the process. Each slight increase isn’t noticeably faster, so you steadily increase the speed at which you can play the passage solidly and comfortably. Eventually, you bring the tempo up to, and perhaps a little higher than, your planned performance speed.

In conjunction with that, I also recommend having a mind-set when practicing that will increase the progress made in any given time period. Instead of setting a specific time period during which you “have to practice,” it is far more effective to limit yourself to a specific period of time. Approach your practice session with the idea that you only have a limited amount of time (say, 30 minutes) to accomplish some specific goal (like advancing 10 notches on the metronome with a difficult passage), and focus on that goal throughout the practice session. Even if you don’t hit the goal, you will tend to accomplish much more than you would if you simply decided to spend 30 minutes practicing. It’s a matter of practicing with your brain, and not just your fingers.

This technique is also applicable to other areas of your life beside practicing a musical instrument. In school, for instance, you only have so much time to study for a particular subject — try to get as much study in that time as you can. Over a period of time, you learn what your personal limits are — and then you can stretch them, just a little (like the metronome trick).

My students have all seen my metronomes. My favorite is a large, traditional pyramid-shaped mechanical metronome with a wooden finish, similar to the one in the photo at the top of this article. Many of my students have electronic metronomes, similar to the one to the right, which is fine. A battery-operated metronome will typically be very accurate and versatile, not to mention less expensive, but I still prefer the wind-up type, largely because batteries always seem to go out at the worst possible time. Plus, I find the large, wind-up unit to be easier to hear and see. Which type you choose will depend on your own needs. Since I use my metronome exclusively in my studio, I am not concerned about portability, and the convenience of being able to quickly re-wind the metronome outweighs its greater cost. If you need one that fits in your case, to use in your school’s practice rooms, then the small electronic units have a clear advantage. There are very small wind-up metronomes, but they tend to be either very expensive, or not very accurate or reliable. To offset the problem with the electronic unit being a bit harder to hear, you can get one that has an earphone jack, and put an earphone in one ear with the volume adjusted to your needs.

Seiko DM50S Clip Digital Metronome

Another type of metronome you might consider, especially if you already have a smartphone, is a downloadable metronome app. I have a free one on my Android phone. I made good use of it on my last vacation, when I did not want to carry a large metronome. You smartphone app can also be used with an earbud, just like the dedicated unit shown to the right. The Seiko DM50S Clip Digital Metronome has a convenient stand-clip, and an earphone jack, and is relatively inexpensive.

Regardless of what sort of metronome you prefer, I strongly urge all of my students to get one, and practice regularly with it.

I spent some time looking around for something that would make a good 3rd prize for my upcoming sweepstakes, and the folks at Things 4 Strings offered to contribute one of their Bow Hold Buddies™ bow accessories for that purpose. I told them I would definitely consider it, but I would like to test one out first. So, they sent me two of them.

Bow Hold Buddies™ bow accessory

I had a student in mind for the evaluation. He was just starting with using the bow, but he was out sick last week, so that delayed the test. I finally had the opportunity to evaluate the Bow Hold Buddy last night. As it turned out, I tested it on two students.

I’ll start out with the negatives:

• You have to take the frog off to install the Bow Hold Buddy. This is not something you want a beginning student to do, because if you drop that frog, it may bounce up through the hair, and you will NEVER get it un-tangled again (don’t even ask how I know this). That will require a re-hairing.
• Even though the Bow Hold Buddy ad says it is suitable for all size hands, I had trouble installing it on a 1/4 bow and getting into the right position, because of the size and location of the bow’s plastic grip.
• Once the Bow Hold Buddy is installed, you can’t fit the bow back in the case. It’s just too big, and when I tried it, the case would not close. Since installing the unit is not something you want the beginning student to do, that means that it’s going to be really inconvenient to install for a student to take home for practice.
• While the grip that the Bow Hold Buddy is not bad, it also doesn’t seem to be optimal.
• This accessory does not appear to address the issue of wrist flexibility, which is the other major bowing problem I see in almost every beginning student.

Bow Hold Buddies™ bow accessory shown in use

Now for the positives:

• Despite my misgivings about the installation problems and suboptimal hand position, after I installed the Bow Hold Buddy, my beginning student instantly achieved a much better bow control, resulting in a much better tone from his instrument.
• Although I decided not to send the Bow Hold Buddy home with the student, the improvement in bow control persisted after removal with only one brief session of use! I was very pleasantly surprised by that.
• Since I did not send the Bow Hold Buddy home with that student, I was able to try it with another student who was having some trouble with bow grip later that evening. This time, since the bow was a 3/4 size, it was much easier to install and get in the correct position. And, the improvement after just a short while of use was the same with the second student — and it also persisted with her after I removed the accessory.

Conclusion:

I’ll reserve final judgement on the merits of this accessory until I see those students again, but for now, I am very impressed with the instant and persistent improvement that I saw with both of them. I expect that these students will need at most one more brief session with the Bow Hold Buddy. My current take on the Bow Hold Buddy is that it is a really good tool to use with a student who is struggling with the bow hold, and it only needs to be used for a few minutes to accomplish its effect.  I think that it would be useful for any violin teacher to use briefly at a lesson, but not to send home with a student, so the ideal customer for this accessory would be a violin teacher with beginning students. What I may do is just attach it to a spare bow (probably a 3/4 or 1/2 size) to let the student use it for a few minutes — that will get around having to install and remove it for each student.

So, with my initial evaluation out of the way, I will be using the unopened unit as the 3rd prize in my upcoming sweepstakes. I will be using the evaluation unit with any of my students that are having bow control problems. If you need one of these accessories and don’t want to wait for the results of my sweepstakes, you can purchase it today from Amazon for about $30 (click on either of the photos in this post to see it in Amazon.com). In my next two posts, which I hope to get to in the next day or so, I will be describing my choices for 2nd, and then 1st prize. I’m getting pretty close to having the sweepstakes ready to start, but I still have some technical details to work out (in my copious free time, of course!). I’m probably missing the optimum period (pre-Christmas) for having this sweepstakes, but it’s just not ready yet.

Illustration of a Beat Frequency (from WikiMedia Commons)

In my prior post, I wrote about problems I was having with my new hearing aids. I had a follow-up visit to the audiologist Wednesday, in which I finally got (most of) my problems with the hearing aids resolved. The main problem is that even though the “frequency shift” program had been removed, I still hear what sounded like a beat-frequency when listening to a single high-frequency sound. In order to illustrate the problem, I took my violin with me to the visit, and I demonstrated beat frequencies to the audiologist by playing a double-stop slightly out of tune. I then gave her the same lecture I give all of my beginning students about Pythagorean tuning, and how the beat frequencies in the upper harmonics tell a musician whether s/he is in tune with other musicians.

After poking around through the setup parameters for my hearing aids, she got the helpdesk for Phonak (the hearing aid manufacturer) on the phone, and explained the problem to them. I supplied some sound effects to the person on the other end, who concluded that the actual problem was that the DSP (digital signal processor) in my hearing aids was reacting to certain tones as if they were feedback, and doing a feedback cancellation loop.

The feedback cancellation program works like this: 1) A steady tone (note) is detected, and the program notes it as feedback if it lasts more than a few milliseconds. 2) The amplifier shuts down the tone at the detected frequency. 3) The tone persists anyway, since it isn’t really feedback, so the DSP switches the amplifier back on. That three-step sequence gets repeated about 4 or 5 times a second, giving an effect almost indistinguishable from a beat frequency. When I hear that, I automatically try to null it out by small adjustments in my finger position — which fails. The net effect is that I can’t tell whether I’m playing in tune, especially when I’m in a group.

When the audiologist removed the feedback cancellation program, I could hear my violin clearly without that beating distortion. It was a dramatic improvement.

I can now play my violin and piano using my hearing aids.

I would still like to find an audiologist who is also a musician. A musician would have understood the problem(s) on the first visit.