The Metronome cannot Teach Pulse!

What is Pulse?  It’s the steady beat that underpins a piece of music.  It’s what you tap your foot to.  It’s the regular bass drum throb in a jazz band or pop group.  It’s what the conductor of an orchestra beats.  I would maintain that without it there would be no rhythm – the song: “I’ve got Rhythm, I’ve got Music”, I think is talking about pulse rather than rhythm.  Pulse is the heart of music.  Playing rhythms without a pulse would be like playing chess without a board – there would be no containing structure.  In the writing down of musical rhythms the pulse is always delineated – combinations of quavers and semiquavers for instance are written (except in some vocal music) in joined groups that indicate the number of beats in a bar.  The pulse is absolutely fundamental.

Students when practicing or learning new rhythms often ignore the pulse – and sometimes the difficulty they experience is not the rhythm itself but their failure to see how that rhythm relates to the pulse – i.e. how the pulse is subdivided.  Teachers will often suggest using a metronome to help the pupil - either to stop them rushing or as an attempt to regularise the rhythm.  But the metronome is an external machine and fitting rhythms to a metronome is more an intellectual process than a musical one.  The student tries to use his brain to grasp the pulse when he should be using his heart!  Actually, to be precise, he should be using his centre of gravity.  Moving from one side to the other across one’s centre of gravity is how pulse is first experienced.

A very young child will discover its centre of gravity when it sways from side to side – it is very soothing (much like being rocked in a cradle).  You may have noticed a young child (sitting) will often sway when it is upset.  If children miss out on this stage they can grow up to have no real feeling for pulse – they find dancing difficult and balance can be a problem.  Pupils cannot be taught pulse as such (what is essentially an experience never can be taught), but swaying, walking or marching in time to music can awaken that sense of shifting across their centre of gravity and give them a feeling for pulse.  It can then be gradually internalised and lo and behold, they become the metronome themselves!  

Once this strong feeling for pulse has been achieved, one of the best ways to learn and practice rhythms is first to sway from side to side (like a metronome!) to establish the pulse of the musical piece to be played, count out loud whether it be 3 or 4 beats in a bar and then to clap the rhythm, accentuating the pulse. It is essential to count out loud for two reasons: firstly, to give the pulse maximum prominence, and secondly so the teacher can hear if or when the counting fails, indicating that the awareness of the pulse has been subordinated to the attempt to clap the rhythm. Full awareness of the pulse must always be maintained!  

It is a good idea to practice easy rhythms to start with so as to get a feeling for this process.  Not only does this help with the pupils’ rhythm but, surprisingly, it also helps with their sight reading – good rhythm reading is the backbone of good sight-reading and it is much easier to grasp the rhythm of the whole bar if it is understood just as a subdivisions of the overall pulse.  Once this ability is fully mastered and absorbed, the pupil should never miss a beat or get lost (even if sometimes they may get the rhythm itself wrong).

PS:  However, for establishing the speed of a piece, the metronome is extremely useful!