Why?

During my life as a drummer, musician and teacher I have often sought out novelty. Some dead ends occur but sometimes moments of clarity arise. I am a tinkerer and experimenter (a walrus). Very open to new ideas, new things and new ways. When novelty, creativity and clarity converge it's magic. And on my musical and teaching path I decided to make another of the most ubiquitous rhythm tools known to man — a metronome.

So Why?

I have consumed a lot of drumming tuition and videos. Virgil Donnati playing the drumset with only one hand (for some reason), Chad Smith jamming with Flea on (a colourful kit), Bernard Purdie grooving through explanations (in a fetching hat). And eventually — Benny Greb (cool German guy with ridiculous groove jamming with a guy on tabla). First introduced to me by a guitarist in a band I played with in the 00s. I was taken by the methodology and pedagogy of his approach. And it was later that I saw his stuff and purchased his teaching on groove.

Metronomes — I always knew I should play with a metronome. But no one explained why. I guess it is self-explanatory. Maybe I need things spelling out for me. I was the last in my class to master the alphabet after all. But maybe that's because that wasn't explained to me either. Or like in French lessons at school — Être and Avoir (if you know, you know). Why so important? Just conjugate it, you'll find out eventually. I had to wait 20 years until I found out why they are the most useful verbs. I'm a late educational bloomer but when I get it I really get it. The there is the metronome. My drum teacher (Toney Riley of Bradford) used to put a metronome on all the time. It was fun. Another challenge and way to improve. But I never questioned it and I didn’t recreate the experience at home as much as I should have.

Benny Greb didn't categorically explain the why either but opened up for me a whole new way to use the metronome that made it far more engaging and fun. And in turn this led me to discover my own "whys".

He introduced the idea that the click doesn't have to just be the beat. That's it! — and I don't mean it can be the 1/8 note or the 1/16 note. It can be anything. It can be on the "e" or the "+". Any partial of the beat. This was a concept that immediately made playing with a metronome more fun for me, and with many more possibilities — possibilities that could have real impact on your playing.

I remember seeing this first in The Art and Science of Groove. I paid to download it years ago. Sadly I can't find the video file now — I think it is on a hard drive somewhere. Well worth a watch. He explains it here in this Drumeo video:

As Benny expertly explains: playing to a click on the quarter note is fine but it leads to playing weaker downbeats, as you aren't relying on your own internal timing but instead slaving to the metronome — chasing the beat. By having the metronome elsewhere in the beat you are in charge of playing the beat and internally it sounds and gets stronger.

But more than that, or at least in equal part, it develops your sense of subdivision — and this is the thing that really grabbed my imagination.

Benny Greb has an excellent app to train this. I bought it. I used it. I loved it. But I found it restrictive. I couldn't freely choose the subdivisions that the click landed on. More on this later.

Then some years later I came across the fantastic book Breakbeat Bible by Mike Adamo. I love grooves. I love their hypnotic, toe-tapping, visceral effect. So naturally I loved this book. It is filled with examples of funk, hip hop and grooves drawn from the rich history of Black music — pedagogically sharp and deeply respectful of that catalogue.

At the back there was a description of alternative ways to use a metronome. Naturally this tweaked my musical nipples and got my attention. Ah, that's like Benny Greb’s idea. Very cool. Placing the metronome on different partials, drawing your attention to what falls on that subdivision, adding silent bars to add difficulty (also something Benny G teaches). And Mike Adamo said try this with a metronome or, even better, with a drum machine. So off I set to try it out with another app favourite of mine, DM1. Almost immediately I noticed it took time to set up the session. And as an impatient, let's-get-on-with-it kind of person I thought — this would be so much easier if an app could do this. Ironically adding months on to the process.

So I made MRT-7. I have a background in web design and some coding knowledge. And with the extra help of Claude and Gemini I got this project over the line with the very challenging backend to make it happen.

So again — why go to all the trouble?

Now I could get all philosophical here, as every "but why?" naturally inherits another "but why?"

Why use a metronome? Because it will improve your timing. That much is self-evident — you'll figure it out eventually, like the alphabet.

But the more interesting question for those of us devoted to groove and rhythm:

Why place the metronome on different parts of the beat? Because it improves your sense of subdivision. Because it puts the downbeat back in your hands. And for me — because it's actually fun. And fun means you'll do it again tomorrow. This way of practising has kept bringing me back to the metronome like nothing else.

Which brings me to why MRT-7 specifically.

I first built a prototype as a web app that you can try here and after discovering how intuitive and useful it was in my playing and teaching I decided to take the technical leap to develop it as an app — MRT-7.

Speed and flexibility. When Mike Adamo suggested trying the displaced-click approach with a drum machine, I picked up DM1 and within a few minutes thought.. this is a faff. The spontaneity was suffering in the setup. MRT-7 is built around the idea that getting started should be quick. Program your click or load your preset, press play, go. Benny Greb’s app was excellent at this but didn’t have the flexibly of a drum machine so I made the hybrid - bridging the gap between metronome and drum machine.

The A and B grids are where that programming happens. Two independent grids, each one a canvas for the click pattern you want to work with. Switch between them freely — no faff. Friction is the enemy of creativity. Make it easy to get practising.

Silent bars. Already touched on above — Benny Greb's idea, refined by Adamo, and genuinely one of the more challenging things you can do with a metronome. Bars where nothing plays and your internal clock either holds or it doesn't. Benny Greb describes this skill beautifully with the metaphor of balance. The first time you come back to the click you are early you adjust, you wobble but eventually your adjustments become undetectable micro adjustments. You improve your balance — you improve your timing.

And MRT-7 it's visual. You can see where the click lands in the beat. Seeing the subdivision laid out in front of you makes the abstract concrete. For many of my pupils this is invaluable. They can see the subdivisions. MRT-7 visually explains rhythm as a grid. This is something many understand much more clearly than selecting musical notes in an app.

So don’t take my word for it — try this preset in MRT-7!

If you have MRT-7 installed on your device it should open up a preset to show you exactly what I am talking about. If you need to install it first click here.

Grid A has a regular 1/4 note click but Grid B has a click on the “e” and “d”. Grid A is like the regular traditional click on the beat you get from any metronome. Grid B is the challenge.

• Try clapping the beat over the entire A+B cycle. Can you stay in time?
• Try playing 16ths along to the entire cycle. Can you feel which subdivisions play with the click patterns of A+B? If you are playing with alternating hands (RLRL) which hand falls on which subdivisions?
• Can you play a groove with the entire cycles and stay in time?

Was this fun? Interesting? Frustrating? Enlightening?

I hope it was something. What it has is potential.

The cool thing is this feature is completely free to use with the app so you can play with this concept ad infinitum to develop your groove. Deepen your pocket. Fill your boots!

And this is just the beginning. There are so many ways to enrich your practice with a metronome. Fun ways and challenging ways as well too. Each enriching your time sat with your instrument in its own special way. That’s why we play an instrument. We come to play!

In this blog I will share more ways to use MRT-7 to develop musical timing. I hope that over time you and I will have even better timing and discover fun ways to engage with the ubiquitous and good old fashioned metronome.

Play time!