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Harmonica Lessons › Community Forum › Harmonica Q&A › Metrodome
Alright Christmas is coming up and I want to get into the spirit. I bought an easy Christmas classic Songs for harmonica. My natural timing is nowhere close to perfect (it sucks) so I went out and bought a Metrodome to help me keep time. I bought a Seiko Quartz metronome SQ I guess 50 volts? It didn’t really have any kind of instructions in it so I guess they expect someone who buys one of these to know what they’re doing. I had to look online to find out how many beats per minute was 4/4 time.
I know that people say that no question is a stupid question, however I feel really stupid asking this. How the heck am I supposed to work this thing? If everything in my book is 3/4 time or 4/4 time why do I need something that goes up to 208 beats per minute. Or for that matter what song was am I ever going to play 194 beats a minute?
HELP!
Your metronome sets the pace.
Your time signature, N/D, determines the duration of your melodies, relative to that pace.
D: The denominator of a time signature determines the “beat unit” – where your downbeats are placed relative to the metronome pace. You can think of D as precision – how much expression / how many notes you can write within this single beat unit? If your measures become ungodly long, that’s an indication that your denominator should become larger so your piece becomes more readable.
D = 2 => 1 metronome beat is equivalent to a half note
D = 4 => 1 metronome beat is equivalent to a quarter note
D = 8 => 1 metronome beat is equivalent to an eighth note
N: The numerator of a time signature tells you how many of the beat units are consisted within any current and following measures.
Examples:
2/2 => 2 half notes per measure (the exact same time duration per masure as 4/4 – their ratios are both equal, but with 1/2 of the precision – often called “cut time”)
3/4 => 3 quarter notes per measure (e.g. Silent Night)
4/4 => 4 quarter notes per measure (common time, which you’ll encounter in most songs)
5/4 => 5 quarter notes per measure, ~88 bpm (example: The Lord of the Rings – “Isengard Theme”; the ONE and the FOUR of the total five beats per measure are accented in this song; also, the intro comes in on beat FOUR)
7/4 => 7 quarter notes per measure, ~90 bpm (example: Soundgarden – “Spoonman”)