I must admit to not being a huge metronome fan. I love the look and sound of a traditional clockwork one, and indeed I have mine sitting on top of my digital piano right now. It gets dusted, and occasionally used.
Many musicians, particularly those working with sequencers and other software, are used to click tracks and digital metronomes in order to ensure their performances are close to the correct timing (or, at least, reduce the amount of work the ‘quantise’ function has to do). It’s hard to find a piece of equipment that doesn’t have some sort of metronome or beat generator on it these days.
However, should you want something simple that provides you the static rhythm you need, take a look at Metronome Plus for the Mac. It offers a variety of sounds and the ability to set different accent beats. Pretty simple stuff.
What would be cool, for those playing more esoteric or mixed time signatures, would be the ability to set several different accent beats rather than just one. For example, if you’re playing in 7/4 time with accents on the 1st and 4th beats you could set it up that way.
Actually, you can do that with any combination of beats up to eight, but beyond that it doesn’t look possible.
Metronome Plus is available in the Mac App Store.
