Impersonating a Metronome
I have often said that teaching Nicholas is more like taking dictation. Nicholas and I have been together for nearly 12 years now. Once when he was about nine, Nicholas marched into his lesson and announced, “I just have something to say about ‘That’s Cool.’ I think it would be a WHOLE lot better if there was a D.C. al Fine to measure 16.”
Other weeks he would come in and immediately start directing the lesson. “Today we should start with scales,” he’d tell me, “because I know they aren’t going well.”
“Ok,” he’d often say, “you need to write this down, I should do more tapping and more right hand alone.”
Just last week, the kid—who will be attending Rice University in the fall, by the way—told me, “Amy, I totally the what the problem is here. Every single page sounds like its own separate piece because the tempos keep changing. I need to use the metronome this week.”
Yep. Sometimes there is no avoiding the metronome.
I am reluctant to admit this truth, because of the negative stereotypes that involve metronomes -- bad piano lessons and stern music teachers (not to mention the infamous painting by Matisse depicting the unhappy kid at the piano with a metronome at his side) -- but sometimes there is nothing more comforting than the tick-tick-tick of the metronome pulling us along. Even kids other than Nicholas seem to sense this, earnestly telling me that they “should just use the metronome” when I ask them how they could fix a piece that is running away or coming apart at the seams. Metronomes keep us honest, when too often it is easy to look the other way at an unsteady tempo or a frenzied performance. Leashed to a metronome, we can happily trot by its side.
But while metronomes are brilliant devices for managing tempo, they should never be used to organize rhythm or to understand the underlying pulse. “Should I use a metronome?” transfer students who have never used a metronome before sometimes ask me. “I know the ‘timing’ is off,” they will explain as if music was a cake that hadn’t been baked long enough. In these cases of bad timing (or rhythm as I gently correct them), metronomes are never the answer. In fact, the tick-tock of the metronome in these instances inevitably becomes just one more thing that a student with a poor sense of pulse could learn to ignore. Indeed, there is nothing worse than a student who obliviously manages to learn to play away in his own rhythmic la-la land, while the metronome is ticking away, the two actions completely unrelated to one another. (Try it sometime. Not playing with the metronome is actually really hard to do. The whole point of its strong unrelenting beat is that it is supposed to shove our unsteadiness into its reliable groove.)
I have come to believe that the longer I can keep beginning students away from the metronome, the better. Exercises like passing a ball to the pulse of a song while singing or chanting rhythms and melodies helps internalize a strong sense of the beat. Learning to switch between passing the “beat” or the “rhythm” at the drop of a hat is a game we often play in performance classes. The last kid standing wins, which makes the students both giggle and focus. Ask any of my early elementary-age kids the difference between “beat” and “rhythm” and not one of them will use the word “timing.” If I have done nothing else right, at least they understand this.
In my own practicing lately, I have been using the metronome a lot. Needing to push a demanding Brahms piano trio up to tempo, the metronome is just the kick in the pants I am looking for. I practice way under tempo. I throw caution to the wind and rip along at performance tempo. I swing manically between super slow tempi and insanely fast ones, giving the music a sort of bi-polar character. I move the metronome up one notch at a time, baby steps so small I don’t even notice the tiny changes in speed. I practice each hand separately with the metronome. I organize musical passages that have a great deal of rubato against the steady beat, reminding myself how far I might have strayed.
Thinking about metronome work reminds me of one of my favorite teaching moments ever. Eight-year-old Jeffrey and I were working on a little toccata, a technically difficult and fast piece. We had agreed that practicing with the metronome was a good idea. But for weeks Jeffrey had been claiming that he had lost his metronome. That afternoon I had just begun my now familiar lecture about how Jeffrey had to find his metronome and use it when he interrupted me. “Miss Amy, I can totally play this,” he said. “I have been impersonating a metronome all week long.”
Writing this anecdote makes me smile, but the larger life metaphor is not lost on me. What I most need in these cold, sluggish February days is to impersonate a metronome. I literally need to ground and steady myself in the faithful work of my practices and routines, rather than fight against the mad tempos of the world, because quite simply, 2023 has already presented some challenges and thrown a few curveballs. There have been too many unexpected deaths and too many funerals. I have been fighting some ongoing allergy-related vocal problems, which makes singing impossible and even speaking triggers relentless coughing. Our schedules are full—mostly of good things—but even too much chocolate gives one a stomachache after a while. Around here, January and February always mean the start of two unpleasant tasks: clearing the garden and preparing taxes, which translates into hours and hours outside on my knees or inside at my desk sorting through paperwork, both jobs equally dreaded. I find myself resorting to bribes and rewards to get myself through my daily to-do lists. I eat too much chocolate.
But when I stop my whining long enough to notice the world around me, there are plenty of fascinating rhythms to synchronize with and to pay attention to. The days are noticeably longer; the light has shifted in tangible ways. Each morning the sunshine now hits first the big monstera plant in the corner of the living room, then the geraniums in the window next to my desk, and then falls across the piano luring me into another day at the keyboard. I finally took down the strings of fairy lights around the kitchen window and bathroom mirror; on Monday I hung up a load of towels on the clothesline for the first time in weeks. A few weeks ago, the amaryllis came out of the garage, and is now sporting six-inches of green leaf. In its full glory, it will be about four feet tall, and could host as many as 13 or 14 red flowers. We’ll see what happens…In the studio, the kids and I celebrate everything: writing compositions about the Lunar New Year and Groundhog Day and the Full Moon Rising and the First Snow Day of the season. Last month Matt and I lifted a glass in acknowledgment to the 18 years of living in this sweet little house. 18 years! A whole childhood, really. That bundle of time seems symbolic, as we both have figured out how to be functional adults under this roof. I may not like taxes and garden cleanup, but the grownup in me knows how to get these tasks checked off my list, even if it takes a bit of chocolate to get me moving.
As I write this, Truffle sits curled up on my lap. After two years, that Little One has discovered that a lap is the best place in the world to be on a winter day. “You know,” said seven-year-old Jack just last week as we were discussing the possibilities of the composition title ‘A Box of Chocolates.’ “A truffle is a third.” Jack was looking at Truffle sleeping on the couch as he said this. Lately we have been working on intervals, learning to recognize the difference between a third and a fifth, a second and a fourth. “And dark chocolate is definitely a fifth.” He said with great conviction. I couldn’t agree more.
While Little Truffle might be a third, Trollope is at least an octave, maybe a ninth. Like so many of us, since January 1st, he has been on a diet. The kids are endlessly fascinated by this. “How’s the diet going?” they ask me every week. “I think the diet is working!” said one kid on Thursday. “Trollope looks less round.”
Trollope will never be our Little One. After all, this was the kitten that doubled his weight between the first two vaccinations, a mere month apart. “Well,” said the puzzled vet looking at the scale, “I’ve never seen this before.” Trollope is, in a word, large. Or as my grandmother used to say, Trollope has “heavy bones.”
And so, in big and small ways, we are settling into the tempo of the season, hitching ourselves to our metronomes and sorting out the rhythms of our lives. Lent begins next week, inviting us into a period of reflection and introspection. One micromovement at a time, the taxes get organized and the garden gets cleared out. We try to celebrate both the lazy snow days and cheerful sunny afternoons with spring-like temperatures. After a dozen years together, those precious piano lessons with Nicholas are now numbered, but in the meantime, I’m paying attention, and writing things down.
