Category: accessible Devices
Hi,
I'm not absolutely sure if this is the proper place for this post, but there doesn't seem to be any musicians specific board and it made sents to post it here. So there's one area in music that I've been seriously procrastinating in, and that is the purchase of a good, accessable digital metronome. It's bad. I've played many musical instruments throughout my life and have always been able to keep good timing, but never once have I purchased a metronome because I haven't found one good enough to be used by a blind person with no issues. I'm going to need a physical digital metronome here, no software recommendations please. If anyone knows of a good one with in the 20-120 dollar range that they have found works well with their situation please let me know.
Cheers,
Austin
Hi
I Got a mechanical one for chrismass and that one is really cool having a pendulum and all that. These kinds of metronomes are of course very accessible as the only thing you have to do is move the pendulum higher or lower depending on the tempo you're looking for. I also have two digital metronomes and both of them double as tuners. The visual tuning feature of those is not accessible for obvious reasons but the metronomes are. There is a little bit of a learning curve but they work fine. so if I were you I'd go to my next friendly instrument store and ask them to show you some metronomes and sea if you can use them easily. There are usually only a few buttons and they should be easy to learn.
I believe there's a lot of web sites that have metronomes on them and a lot of apps if you have a smart phone. One app I can reckomend is Ireal pro music book and playallong which is an app that generates playallong digitally so you can change the tempo and styles of the songs.
As a final note to you, there is a place for musicians here, it's called the jam session. I think you can ask the comunity leaders on here to move your topic to that board if you wish.
I use a Matrix metronome. Not sure of the exact model, but I can get that for you if you're interested. It's really simple to use. It's about the size of a credit card and just has a dial and a speaker along with the on/off switch. When I first got it, I had someone sit down with me and read the different tempos as I wrote them down. For example, between 40 and 60 BPM, the tempo goes up in increments of two. Increments of three between 60 and 72. From there it goes up in increments of four with some increases around 200 BPM. From there, you just have to count the number of clicks from 40 BPM on the dial to set the tempo. It has a tuning pitch, so you use that as a starting point. The next click after that tone is 40 BPM, then 42 BPM, and so on. It's really easy to use since, unlike most digital ones, there's no screens, just the dial which as I said clicks with every increment. Plus, it has a nice tapping sound instead of the annoying beeps that most digital metronomes have. If you're interested in apps, I use Tempo King and that's accessible. Hope this helps!
If you have an Idevice, I really recommend you TempoPerfect. It's for free and very accessible. The problem I have with this App though, is that I don't like the sounds of the beats but it's a great metronome App. I also have a electronic metronome which is very accessible because if you hold for one second the plus or minus button, it jumps 20 numbers in beats per minute which makes the metronome very accessible. If for example a piece says 72 beats per quarter note, you just start from 40, hold one second and it jumps to 60 and press 12 times the plus button. If you are interested I can check what is the model!