Many of you will know that I write novels – Medieval Fantasy Adventures. This is just one genre of fiction, and there are many others. We all have our favourites, but one of the on-trend genres right now is called “Enemies to Lovers”.
The “enemies to lovers” trope describes a romantic narrative where two characters who initially dislike or oppose each other gradually develop romantic feelings. This trope often explores themes of overcoming misunderstandings, prejudices, and initial animosity to find love.
If you currently think of the metronome as your enemy, you (and it) need to follow the journey of the characters in one of these novels!
To begin with, you probably dislike working with a metronome.
I’ll give you four probable reasons for this:
- It puts you off. You have enough to think about with notes, timing, counting, fingering. Who wants to add listening to an annoying click on top of all that?
- It restricts you. Just when you’re tentatively feeling for the next note, the click sounds and you realise you’re too late. You missed it! This is extremely frustrating.
- It controls you. You want to feel in charge of your playing, yet you’re being asked to follow some inanimate object which cannot possibly give you the freedom you need to express yourself through the music.
- It eludes you. You are so busy concentrating on just playing the right notes with the right fingers, you don’t even hear the damned click. When you get to the end of the piece, you have no idea if you were in time or not.
If you’ve felt any of the above (and most people would cite all four objections or even more), then you’re thinking of the metronome as your enemy.
Now, look back at the definition of “enemies to lovers”. To journey through the story, you need to overcome misunderstandings, prejudices and initial animosity.
Misunderstandings first. The metronome is not in charge, you are. If it’s going faster than you can play, slow it down. Your teacher may have asked you to use a certain tempo, but you must work more slowly to begin with. Give yourself a chance, and practise with a very slow tempo, then gradually increase it as you gain fluency and confidence.
Prejudices next. The feeling of restriction is a prejudice against the first and most crucial tenet in music, which is you must play in time. This is more important than getting the right notes, the correct fingering, or that beautiful lingering legato you’re trying to achieve. All those other things matter, but they come after you’ve learnt to play on the beat.
The metronome allows you to hear and feel the beat. If you reject the click in favour of playing a particular elusive note (rather than a wrong note, or nothing at all), you have your priorities all wrong. Play on the click, please. Everything else comes later. A prejudice against the click may result in the right notes, but you won’t be playing the music.
Initial animosity – if it’s initial, why have I put it last? Well, just as in the story when two strangers meet, most people aren’t against metronomes to begin with; they’re usually intrigued, and perhaps even excited to be working in a new way.
Your teacher has told you to acquire a metronome, and now you’re looking forward to finding out how to use it and what it will do for you. Again though, just as in our enemies to lovers story, animosity sets in pretty quickly! You struggle to listen to the click and play in time, and you conclude early on that it’s holding you back rather than helping you.
But it’s the “animosity” that will hold you back, not the metronome itself. If you persist in thinking of the metronome as your enemy, you’ll never learn to work with it.
To overcome Problem Number 4, in which you find it hard to tune in to the click, I recommend practising a scale first, one hand, one octave. Even just the five fingers of one hand, playing C, D, E, F, G and back again. Discipline yourself to listen to the metronome and play, as they say, “in the middle of the click”. Not in front of it, nor behind it, but bang in the middle. When you can do it, try the scale with both hands. When you’re confident with that, increase the tempo, or decrease the tempo. Experiment with it – you’re practising listening, engaging with the click. Then pick out a bar or two of your piece. Use one hand. Then both. Then add another bar. Take it slowly, step by step, and you’ll get it. You’ll train your ear to be aware of the click, even when you’re not actively listening to it. That’s what this is.
Eventually, you arrive at the point where you’re no longer enemies. In the story, you’re falling in love with the other person!
Perhaps you’re never going to think of the metronome as a lover, but if it becomes your friend, that’s still a Happy Ending. You can put the book down with a sigh of contentment, and perhaps reach for the next in series…