Originally posted by brewer9
My advice as a player for over 20 years is that you shoulod ALWAYS practice with the metronome. Timing is the single most important thing to completely master, for any and every style. Stomp your foot to the metronome always. That metronome should be going and your foot stomping during every practice session. This may seem like a big pain the buttox sometimes but will pay off HUGE! good luck.
Hmm...some modification may be necessary here. While I am certainly a proponent of practicing with a metronome, there are times when doing so isn't necessarily the best idea, and may even be counter-productive. When you're learning a new tune/technique/scale/etcetera, it's best to work "out of time" until you have things under your fingers. Once the fingerings and notes are under control so to speak, THEN start working on playing them in time, with your metronome.
Usul, to answer your original questions (well, as best I can at least
):
120 beats per minute (abbreviated as BPM usually) is a typical "dance" club tune tempo. Think of the Butabi brothers in "A Night At The Roxbury" and you'll get the idea ("Baby don't hurt me, baby don't hurt me....no more"
)
As for 4/4 and 4/6 time signatures, well...there certainly is a 4/4, but 4/6 is a new one on me
. Maybe you meant 6/4? Here's a "primer" on time signatures:
In the fraction used to give the time, the upper number is the number of beats or counts per measure, and the lower number is the subdivision that gets the count. The subdivisions are based upon a measure of 4/4 time, which is also called "common time". Most (~75% at a guess) western music (i.e. "white man's music
) is in 4/4 time, therefore we call it common time. If you ever see a piece of music with a "c" in place of the time signature, that means common time. Anyway, I digress, as usual. The subdivisions used are all based on "powers" of 2 (and you thought you had managed to finally get out of math
): 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32...(half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirtysecond). Those Brits have different names for the same things (quavers, semi-quavers, demi-quavers...something like that
). There is also the whole note, but as it fills an entire measure of 4/4 (one note played for 4 counts), it's not a subdivision (1/1 = 1, right?). So, in 4/4 time you would count four quarter notes per measure, in 6/4, you'd count six quarter notes. This will cover all "simple" meters (which are the ones where you count the upper number), there are also "compound" meters, which we'll save for another post, as this one is getting REEEEEEAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLYYYYYYY long now
.
Finally (and hopefully breifly), here's a great practicing idea I got from a teacher years ago: Instead of practicing with your metronome clicking away on each beat (4 clicks for a measure of 4/4), have it click half notes (every other beat). Count the clicks as 2 and 4, it may help to think of it this way: one TWO three FOUR, with the uppercase numbers being where the clicks are. What this does is make YOU supply a solid one or downbeat on each measure, which I think we'd all agree is somewhat important (lock in with that bass drum, and all else is forgiven
)
