Press Release Summary: With a software metronome you can do many things to liven up the rhythm for your practice. Use different instruments to play the bar line, set the volumes and times individually within the bar, and play multi-beat polyrhythms and long bars.
Press Release Body: Have you ever got tired of the constant tick tick of a metronome in your practice? Ever felt that it "deadens" your playing? No surprise as metronomes have been criticised by some composers because they can lead people to play "metronomically" if over used. Lively rhythms have subtle variations of timing within the bar which give them the swing or groove.
But you still need to work on your rhythm, and learn to keep a steady beat. How can you do that without learning to play metronomically?
The solution may be to use a software metronome and transform your computer into the most flexible metronome you can imagine. You can vary the timings individually for each beat within the bar, also the volumes.
There are many other things you can do to liven up your practice. For instance, you can also set a different instrument to play the bar line so that you can hear the position of the bar when you practice. Or set the metronome to slowly speed up or slow down over a number of minutes to practice accelerandi and diminuendi.
With Tune Smithy's polyrhythm metronome, you can: * Play simple (3/4, 4/4, 2/4 etc) and compound rhythms (6/8, 9/8 etc), emphasising the bar and its sub-divisions. * Play meters such as 5/4 and 7/4 * Play polyrhythms consisting of several contrasting rhythms played at once, such as three and four beats in the same bar. * Play long bars (hypermeasures) - repeating sequences of different metrical units - (including polyrhythmic long bars). * Adjust beat times and volumes individually within a bar, for instance to play syncopated rhythms. * Set the rhythm to vary tempo gradually for instance to increase in tempo for a number of minutes or seconds * Set the rhythm, instruments and other settings to change at any time in the rhythm, e.g. after so many bars etc.