Modern Alternatives to the Metronome

In Search of Something Less Traumatizing Than My Metronome

A traditional mechanical metronome is not only boring, uninspiring, harsh-sounding, and lacking in adjustability, it often falls short of its fundamental duty of keeping accurate time. Nonetheless, metronomes play an essential role during practice of any rhythm-based art such as music or dance, and there is a certain skill to using one effectively.

While pinnacle metronome meets the professional need, amateur musicians may find metronomes somewhat lacking, particularly in terms of fostering motivation and creativity — they suffer an acute lack in the soul and fun department.

What is more notable is that all the sounds the volca is producing in this demo are arbitrarily selected and fully customizable. In this particular video, I used a mix of tabla sounds, synthetic voice[1], clave, clapping, etc, layered and mixed in various ways. While the demo is intentionally simple to focus on metronomic aspects, one’s creativity is the limit.

Other aspects of the demo worth calling out are the beat accents. In addition to being able play or layer different sounds for different accents, the volume level of each sound can be tweaked. I used a higher volume for the 3rd beat count in the second example.

Finally, this demo showcased the ability for variations measure to measure — which does begin to strain the memory limits of the device.

The basic sequencer design works naturally as a metronome and it’s very easy to get started. A sequence consists of up to 16 steps (4 beats with 4 subdivisions) which can loop indefinitely at the set tempo (which has a full range of 10 to 600 beats per minute). So if you wanted to do a rhythm in waltz time (3/4), you simply pick a sound and set it for each beat in a 12 step sequence — then play and go.

This provides a lot of canvas for metronomic creativity for enjoyable practice sessions.

Needless to say, the Organelle is constantly evolving and improving, yet clearly, it provides all the building blocks needed to assemble the most advanced and ultimate metronomic functions — if one were so inclined.

As this article demonstrates, there is a zany world of sometimes peculiar musical devices that can be commandeered for a wide variety of useful metronomic tasks, helping develop the rhythmic senses, while also potentially opening up whole new avenues of musical creativity for amateurs and professionals alike.

— N.

All assets used in this article were either created by me, obtained as press/media assets, applicably licensed, or used with permission. All copyrights remain with the original owners. This article was written on my own dime and time.

[1] All the synthetic voice samples were generated on macOS using the say command with the Fiona voice.

[2] I intentionally captured a synthetic voice recording of “n” instead of “and” to represent & counts.

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