Jeff Berlin and Metronomes

As some of you may know, the monstrously talented and legendary electric bass player Jeff Berlin is very outspoken against the metronome as a learning tool.

Recently on myspace, he brought out his arguments against the metronome. Friend him on myspace if you want to read them for yourself.

In my opinion, he is extremely gifted and had never found a personal use for a metronome, so he therefore decided they are useless. Mere mortals like myself disagree. Below is my reply to Mr. Berlin.
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Granted, there are many people all over the world who have developed great time and musical feeling without metronomes.
In the history of music and its practice, the metronome is a relatively new innovation.
These facts alone, while true and compelling for what they are, do not mean metronomes are useless or harmful.
I was fortunate enough as a child to have a piano teacher show me how to use a metronome as a constructive practice aid, NOT as a crutch to support bad time. She showed me how to use a metronome to pick apart and master technical passages, bridging from playing them out of time toward playing them in time, first slowly, then gradually up to performance tempo, with FEELING and CONFIDENCE and AUTHORITY every step of the way.

The metronome gives me a means to scrutinize my technical problems and turn those problems, ultimately, into the effortless coordinated action which results in music.
In other words, after playing arpeggios on the changes of Giant Steps out of time, I played them at 40 on the metronome. Then 42. Then 44. It helped me figure out exactly what was getting in my way at any particular moment so that I could stop and fix it.
I think this method of metronome practicing has also helped me with fluid, lyrical, out-of-time playing as well. This is because interpretive "pushing and pulling" of time can be done with more freedom from technical blocks. I am not tempted to "slow down for the hard parts" in a performance situation (like so many of my students do and have to be trained out of).

Further, I know of no instances where practicing with a metronome has harmed anyone's musical development.

Finally, for as many good musicians with great time and feel (like you, Mr. Berlin) who have not used or needed the aid of a metronome in their development, there are many more who resist the metronome and trot out all the arguments about how "it kills the feel" and is "too mechanical" and "has no soul" etc. when it is obvious to me that they are in denial about their own deficiencies and, rather than confront them, criticize and dismiss possibly helpful tools out of ignorance, fear and personal insecurity.

These same people often resist things like learning to read music, scales, and arpeggios. You may know someone like this. To put it bluntly, these people say "I play from the heart" so that they can continue to SUCK and not feel internally conflicted about it.

Come on. You know it's true.

I credit the metronome for valuable assistance in my technical development. Simply because you have never used or felt the need for one, Mr. Berlin, does not mean it did not help me. It did.

OK I'm done now.

BTW I saw you give a clinic in about 1990 when you were endorsing the Peavey Pallaedium bass. Watching you up close showed me that I had to use my RH thumb as a floating mute to keep the open strings under control. Thank you very much -- that realization alone made a huge improvement in my playing. I got to talk to you a bit and you were very cool. I appreciate it to this day.

Guess how I practiced that technique and got it completely internalized?

WITH A METRONOME!

So I will continue to disagree with you on this point.

OK now I'm really done.