ARRRRHGHGHGHGHG.... I know that this is a bit of a "hot take", seeing as there are many musicians and teachers that swear by metronomes, and if a student or ensemble is slightly out of whack rhythmically then it is immediately... METRONOME!!!!

To me, the metronome is a useful tool in the barest of moderation... but ultimately it is a mechanical tool of death. It is the musical equivalent of whipping someone endlessly until they bleed out any semblance of musicality and intent and turn into mindless robots.

The markings on the page are at best an approximation... sure, I'm not advocating for pure chaos in timing and rhythm... but when you speak, there is a natural ebb and flow of pulse that is normal, and this is exactly what an over-reliance on a metronome destroys completely. Plus, the hard edged attack to the sound of the metronome means that there is no ability to have any flexibility in pulse... it is just the imperial death march pulse only.

At some point, it was a useful tool for helping to decipher rhythms and the unintentional loss of pulse... but in the end, these feelings need to be internalised musically and logically and not by some external source.

... and when people use it to hold an ensemble together. Well, sure... it works, just like handcuffing people together means that they will stay together... or you could just walk along a path together with a common destination like normal people!

Pfffff... what brought on this particular old-man crank out? Well, recently I sat in on a masterclass... and there was endless talk about the metronome and the difference between 170 and 125 bpm... honestly, it lasted longer than 5 seconds, which is about the amount of time it deserved.... and all through it, people thought that it was enlightening instead of meaningless crap.

The ancient Greeks described two forms of time... Kairos and Chronos... one is the metric time that is measured by watches and the other is the experienced time... needless to say, the experienced time is always the most important if you happen to be human and wanting to convey human concepts (like in music...), and the other is useful for other things. However, in this day and age... we concentrate too heavily on the unimportant one in music.. why??? who knows, perhaps so that you can tell people that they are wrong?

Anyway... rant over... don't get me started on the prevalence of tuning machines either. We used to have things called ears...

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