It did the job until it made the ultimate sacrifice
Written: Feb 20 '06 (Updated Feb 20 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Loudest metronome available at the time I bought it.
Cons: No longer available; Other products are less expensive with more features.
The Bottom Line: These pop up used from time to time, but there are more modern units at lower prices with better features.
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| Saxguy's Full Review: Roland Dr. Beat Metronome - with Tap Tempo Key Db-... |
I was surfing the musical equipment category and was delighted to find a PRODUCT that I could review.
I got this metronome several years ago. It was expensive, around $150 at the time. While it had a number of nice features, it had the one feature I really needed which was loud volume. I needed a metronome I could hear when playing loudly on the tenor sax. I had plenty of metronomes that could handle lesser volumes, but this was the only one I could hear when wailing on tenor.
This had everything I wanted:
- tempos from 35 to 240 beats per minute
- accented beat from 2-6 beats per measure
- A = 440 tuning note
- A tap feature, where you could hit the tap button a few times and it would calculate the tempo.
- slider volume controls for the basic beat and back beats
- Backbeat options for eighth note and sixteenth note backbeats as well as triplet beats, also through use of sliders.
The unit featured rapid tempo adjustments and was really quite easy to use.
This unit was dependable at all tempo levels and really enhanced my practice sessions, because I could use it with all my instruments.
As a player and teacher, I believe the metronome should be used about half the time in practice for written music with steady tempos. The player has to learn to play with others (a metronome is a proxy for this) at a steady tempo but has to be able to play a steady tempo by himself or herself.
Being able to play well at extremely fast tempos has been a challenge for me. A teacher told me about an exercise that not only helped with this, but also with improvisation in general. I call it the ׀ and 4” exercise. In jazz, the accented beats are on 2 and 4. That’s the click you hear when a good drummer hits his hi-hat cymbals on those beats. By accenting those beats, the time when playing jazz music is much more flowing, as compared to fast classical music where the accents are on 1 and 3 and there’s a heavy accent on the downbeats (beat 1). The best examples of these are Sousa marches. Plus, my teacher told me how to make the exercise a test of my ability to think and react improvisationally at fast tempos.
So here’s the exercise:
1. Determine a tempo that you can play, but it’s difficult. If you set a tempo too high, the exercise will bog down. For example, let’s use 240
2. Set the metronome at exactly half the tempo (120). The quarter note beats at half tempo sound exactly the same as half note beats at tempo.
3. The player should regard the clicks as the hi-hat clicks on 2 and 4.
4. Start playing quarter notes within the tempo, using a particular scale or chord or progression some sort of framework or even NO framework.
5. When the quarter notes are comfortable and the player is feeling beats 2 and 4, start layering in eighth notes and rests.
This exercise has some collateral benefits for improvisors. The player can tell if he or she is being really creative and free in the notes chosen or is the player falling into a comfort zone limited to a few keys and patterns.
As is the case of any challenging musical exercise, the player has to be prepared for some humbling experiences along the way.
This metronome helped me with that exercise wonderfully well because I could hear it no matter what.
The metronome was powered by a 9-volt battery and that’s what ultimately caused its demise.
After several years, the plastic unit holding the battery mounts, which was connected by 2 little wires, basically fell apart. It just wasn’t going to work any more.
So, I ended up looking around at units, including Roland’s new Dr. Beat units, and selected a drum metronome/machine, the TAMA RW-105 programmable metronome, which has more beat divisions, is louder and cost around $100.
This unit is available on Ebay and elsewhere for a little more money. While the unit did a great job, I will give it 3 stars and a not recommended because the technology has advanced ahead of this discontinued unit.
Thanks for reading. God bless!
You might enjoy some of my other musical performance related reviews:
How I grab an audience
Sheetmusicplus.com web store
Activemusician.com web store
My worst gig
What music has helped me learn about myself
Improve Your Intonation
Ear Training I - Beginning and Intermediate Players
Ear Training II - Prelude to Improvisation
Ear Training III – Time to learn tunes and PLAY
Putting a Jazz Band Together
Being a one man band for fun and profit
How to get your child started on an instrument
I compose the way I play
Fast fingers are important
How I help my students learn new music
I learned about a lot more than music from my music teachers
The value of creativity
Develop a business as a private music teacher
Microphones:
Shure SM-57 mike
AKG C1000s Twin Pack Microphones
Audix D4 mike
Audix OM-3 mike
AMT Roam 1 wireless mike
Audio Technica Pro-35x wireless mike
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Recommended:
No
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