Why I don’t like using metronomes with my beginner students

Back in the day when I was taking piano lessons, it was common for my teachers to promote proper rhythm and pacing by having me play my songs along with a metronome.

I hated it.

First of all, it was hard to do. It wasn’t that I shied away from trying difficult things. It was just that I didn’t ever seem to gain any wins. Learning to play along with a metronome requires a completely different set of skills than learning to read music. And for beginners who are already building their skills in reading music, adding a metronome to the mix is just compounding challenge upon challenge. This is why I found using a metronome to be incredibly demotivating when I was a piano beginner. It was hard enough for me to read music in the first place, only to find a whole new set of things to struggle with once the metronome was turned on. It was one challenge after another!

Second, I hated how robotic and depersonalized the metronome was. It wouldn’t wait for me to keep up, it would just keep on tick-tick-ticking regardless of the personal pain it was causing me. It did not feel like a support in my piano lessons. It felt like an enemy.

Now of course, just because something is difficult at first doesn’t mean we should shy away from it forever. It’s true that with practice, I would eventually be able to play my pieces along with the metronome. But I still think there’s something to be said about using a robotic and depersonalized machine early on in our lessons when building confidence and pride is so important.

This has led me to shift my philosophy on teaching good rhythm and pacing.

I’ve noticed over time that when I send students off to play with a metronome as part of their homework, I’m setting them up into a practice routine that is very independent and isolated. They practice with their metronome as though no one else is listening to them play.

I don’t like this for piano instruction. To me, music is a relational art form — we use it to express ourselves and communicate with others. Therefore, I believe that teaching music should also be relational. To me, that means that just as playing piano is a shared experience (between you and your audience, or you and the composer who wrote the song you’re playing), so too should learning music be a shared experience.

To figure out how I could promote more relationality into how I teach rhythm, I reflected on my core teaching philosophy, which is to present myself not as an instructor, but as a member of a musical community who is trying to invite others to join this great community with me.

So I decided that rather than giving my students a metronome as a model of good rhythm, I would arrange our lessons so that students see me as a model of good rhythm, and to invite them to become good rhythm-keepers with me.

How do I do this? Well, I’m setting myself up as a model of good rhythm every time I play a song for them with good pacing. My students watch me play, they listen, and it helps them set an expectation for what a steady pace of that song will sound like.

But I have an extra trick that lets me support them at home while they’re practicing that does not require the use of the metronome!

That trick is, I record videos of duets for every song that they’re learning, so that they can learn to play with good pacing with me, rather than for me.

Many primer books have a teacher duet part at the bottom of the page, so if one is available I use it. If the song does not have a duet, I just make one up myself.

So here’s how my lesson process typically works. Students will spend a week or two learning the notes of the new song and figuring out the rhythm as best as they can. Once they’re comfortable with the song, I offer them the opportunity to try the song as a duet. If they agree, I send them a link to an unlisted YouTube video where they can practice along with the video as many times as they need.

This is where the real magic happens!

By me providing a stable rhythm as the lower part of the duet, I’m acting as a human metronome for my student. I’m also promoting the idea that learning and playing music are both shared activities, and students get to enjoy even more “time” with an adult which is so important to early learning.

This to me is a more engaging and relational way of teaching rhythm and pacing than simply assigning the use of a metronome.

And the results have been astounding. Students who struggled to keep a practice routine suddenly find their motivation to learn and can’t be pulled away from their keyboards. I recently had a student who had been studying with me for a single month request four duets to work on that week! It was instantly clear to me that I had landed on a highly motivating way to foster both good rhythm and good relationships through my piano lessons.

It’s true that as my students progress, that I will eventually wean them over to using a metronome. After all, a metronome is a good tool for helping you learn good pacing! But I introduce the metronome as an extension of playing with another person, not a replacement. With positive associations in place, they can learn to see the metronome as a friend at their piano :)