A Big Metronome: Time Development Studies

The Big Metronome is a must own for all bassists and drummers. This book is part of a series of books which are designed to teach a student:

1. How to develop a better internal sense of time.

2. Feel music on a more macro level.

3. Develop an innate sense of musical form.

4. Develop a more natural feel that breathes with the music.

All this is accomplished by requiring the student to feel time not count time. The Big Metronome is filled with numerous exercises and comes with 3 CDs to play along with each exercise. Each CD contains 13 tracks which correspond to the metronome markings found on a traditional metronome. Each track gives you a two bar count off and then a click every measure, two measures or four measures. As this pulse happens at wider and wider periods of time it requires the student to rely more and more on their own internal sense of time.

The Spiral Edition of this book has the 3 CDs included with the book. The Perfect bound edition of this book does not have the CDs included which can be purchased separately in CD or MP3 format.

The 3 CDs for this book could not contain all metronome markings with a click for either every measure, two measure and four measures. This would be way more than 3 CDs. Additional audio files are available in the form of MP3 audio downloads. There are various packages depending on your needs including the Big Metronome Bundle which contains over 45 hours of MP3s with every traditional metronome marking with every macro beat up to 8. This is a huge resource to use as an addition to this book.

EXCERPT 1

The course of study presented in this book assumes that the reader has intermediate to advanced knowledge of music. With any course of study questions arise, therefore Muse-eek presents a forum where relevant questions will be answered by the author. Please visit the muse-eek website at muse-eek first and check the FAQ section for this book to see if your question has already been answered. If not, use the form on the website to e-mail your questions.

This book is divided into 3 sections each corresponding to one of the enclosed CDs. Within each section different exercises will be presented to help develop your internal sense of time. You can work on a variety of different exercises at once or just concentrate on the areas you find the most challenging. Within each section the exercises are divided as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Technical Exercises
A. Rhythm Techniques
B. Melodic Techniques
C. Harmonic Techniques
3. Creative Exercises
A. Improvisation

First read through the Introduction to familiarize yourself with the basic theory. Depending on your ability you can then proceed to any section of the book you find intriguing. It is recommended that you work with some of the technical exercises first to gain some control. Many of the exercises presented in this book are excerpts from other books. If you find certain exercises particularly helpful, you may wish to do a larger study by working out of the excerpted book.

The methods presented in this book are only a few of the exercise possibilities. Be imaginative! Develop other exercises to use with the CDs. It can be as simple as reading through a piece of music, to practicing with a whole ensemble using the CDs.

EXCERPT 2

The Big Metronome is designed to help you develop a better internal sense of time. This is accomplished by requiring you to feel time rather than having you rely on the steady click of a metronome. The idea is to slowly wean yourself away from an external device and rely on your internal/natural sense of time.