Yes there's a huge amount of technique available now for this, including several books on the subject. But hardly anyone seems to know about it. Most music teachers are completely unaware of it for some reason and end up re-inventing some of the techniques from scratch themselves.
Try this exercise to get started
I talk about it some more here with ideas and tips. First of
Here is a playlist of all the videos in the sequence Enjoyment, Relaxation and Precision in Metronome Technique
And read here
The Vanishing Metronome Click - Burying the Click - with various exercises to hear exactly where you are relative to the metronome click and be able to bury the click every time, or play ahead or behind.
This doesn't make your playing mechanical. Its an exercise in coordination like an artist practising to draw straight lines or perfect circles freehand. Which doesn't mean you become a cubist and build your paintings out of straight lines and circles, they might not have a single line or circle in them.
The aim isn't to become a human metronome (for most musicians anyway) but as you say to become more rhythmically precise.
Then, try Mac Santiago's "Beyond the metronome" and Andrew Lewis's Rhythm, What it is and how to improve your sense of it especially his book 2 How to improve your sense of rhythm
They have numerous fun exercises and ideas to help with precise sense of time and rhythm.
Many other resources on my Metronome Links - Bounce Metronome page
If you are on Windows or Linux you can use my Bounce Metronome program to help Check Out the Astonishing Bounce Metronome Pro
I've just launched a kickstarter to get it running on the Mac as well, do support it if interested to see this program on a Mac:
Here is the kickstarter page if you want to support it: Bounce Metronome, Tune Smithy, Lissajous 3D... on Intel Mac!
You get an unlock key for all my programs if the project succeeds
You can also watch many videos on my Video Resources pages and youtube channel, this is the page about the Go Silent Briefly exercises
How Steady is Your Tempo? - Test With Go Silent Briefly
Andrew Lewis particularly talks about these. You can do without a metronome altogether if you use these methods - or you can use it to complement your metronome practice.
This section is taken pretty much word for word from the Wikipedia article on the Metronome - I contributed a fair bit to this part of it, in collaboration with another editor who was keen on Entasis and found the academic sources for it for the article. It also draws on some material I contributed to the Wikipedia article on Notes inégales
One starting point is to notice that we rely on a sense of rhythm to perform ordinary activities such as walking, running, hammering nails or chopping vegetables. Even speech and thought has a rhythm of sorts. So one way to work on rhythms is to work on bringing these into music, becoming a "rhythm antenna" in Andrew Lewis's words.
Until the nineteenth century in Europe, people used to sing as they worked, in time to the rhythms of their work. Musical rhythms were part of daily life, Cecil Sharp collected some of these songs before they were forgotten. For more about this see Work song and Sea shanties. In many parts of the world music is an important part of daily life even today. There are many accounts of people (especially tribal people) who sing frequently and spontaneously in their daily life, as they work, and as they engage in other activities.
Musicians may also work on strengthening their sense of pulse using inner sources, such as breath, and subdividing breaths. Or work with the imagination, imagining a pulse. They may also work with their heart beat, and rhythms in their chest muscles in the same way, ( Andrew Lewis Rhythm - What it is and How to Improve Your Sense of It)
Another thing they do is to play music in their mind's ear along with the rhythms of walking or other daily life rhythms. Other techniques include hearing music in ones mind's ear first before playing it. Musicians can deal with timing and tempo glitches by learning to hear a perfect performance in their mind's ear first.
In some styles of music such as early music notes inégales (according to one minority view interpretation) it can be appropriate to use a different approach that doesn't work so much with a sense of inner pulse and instead works on ideas of gestures and is more closely related to rhythms of speech and poetry. Ideas from this approach can be useful for all styles of music.
The basic ideas are -
The quotes there are from Marianne Ploger and Keith Hill The Craft of Musical Communication Orphei Organi Antiqui 2005
This just touches on some of the ideas; for more details, see their article.
This is a minority view on interpretation of Notes inégales but well worth a mention here because of its different approach to musical time and rhythm, and its relevance to the way rhythms can be practised.
The more generally accepted view is that Notes inégales were played with the same amount of swing nearly all the time, like modern Jazz.
The main evidence from this comes from early mechanical clocks that were constructed to play Notes Inegales, and a treatise on the technique of pinning for mechanical organs. See: Dirk Moflants The Performance of Notes Inegales: The Influence of Tempo, Musical Structure, and Individual Performance Styleon Expressive Timing Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 28, No. 5, June 2011
But on the other hand - that might just be because they were clocks, it might not reflect the way that ordinary musicians of the time played the music.
Whatever your views about correct way to play Notes inégales, the ideas can be refreshing if you've been brought up on the notion that "perfect musical time" is in some way, precise and repeatable like a metronome, also great things to explore in your own rhythms!
When it works well, the basic feeling is one of continuous refreshment and surprise and enjoyment as you play, in every single note you play, it's like a new thing, newly minted, born for the first time in this moment. This is felt by both performer and listener.
Get it wrong though and the music limps and drags and is just confusing to listen to. You need to feel the music and the surprise in every note, and then the unevenness of the Entasis comes through from that, if you try instead to play in a random unpredictable way just for the sake of it - that's when it goes wrong. It's a fine balance. However, many musicians, have this naturally, without thought, like breathing. Perhaps you have this, in your playing, already . As you work on your rhythmic precision, then you need to take care to continue to encourage this side of your playing as well, that's why I've given it as much space or more as the section on metronome practice.
More about it, from the same article as before:
If you do use a metronome, and many do, and they find it helpful for rhythmic precision - be sure to realize you don't need a metronome to have a wonderful sense of rhythm. Many musical cultures with a great sense of rhythm never use the metronome at all!
I've worked this post up into a much longer article which you might enjoy on my Science20 column here:
Metronomes - Do You Need Them? And A Metronome Using Conducting Techniques For Visual Precision
VANISHING CLICK
Try this exercise to get started
I talk about it some more here with ideas and tips. First of
Here is a playlist of all the videos in the sequence Enjoyment, Relaxation and Precision in Metronome Technique
And read here
The Vanishing Metronome Click - Burying the Click - with various exercises to hear exactly where you are relative to the metronome click and be able to bury the click every time, or play ahead or behind.
LIKE AN ARTIST LEARNING TO DRAW STRAIGHT LINES AND CIRCLES FREEHAND
This doesn't make your playing mechanical. Its an exercise in coordination like an artist practising to draw straight lines or perfect circles freehand. Which doesn't mean you become a cubist and build your paintings out of straight lines and circles, they might not have a single line or circle in them.
The aim isn't to become a human metronome (for most musicians anyway) but as you say to become more rhythmically precise.
BOOKS, AND ONLINE RESOURCES
Then, try Mac Santiago's "Beyond the metronome" and Andrew Lewis's Rhythm, What it is and how to improve your sense of it especially his book 2 How to improve your sense of rhythm
They have numerous fun exercises and ideas to help with precise sense of time and rhythm.
Many other resources on my Metronome Links - Bounce Metronome page
If you are on Windows or Linux you can use my Bounce Metronome program to help Check Out the Astonishing Bounce Metronome Pro
KICKSTARTER FOR MAC
I've just launched a kickstarter to get it running on the Mac as well, do support it if interested to see this program on a Mac:
Here is the kickstarter page if you want to support it: Bounce Metronome, Tune Smithy, Lissajous 3D... on Intel Mac!
You get an unlock key for all my programs if the project succeeds
You can also watch many videos on my Video Resources pages and youtube channel, this is the page about the Go Silent Briefly exercises
How Steady is Your Tempo? - Test With Go Silent Briefly
EXERCISES THAT DON'T INVOLVE A METRONOME
Andrew Lewis particularly talks about these. You can do without a metronome altogether if you use these methods - or you can use it to complement your metronome practice.
This section is taken pretty much word for word from the Wikipedia article on the Metronome - I contributed a fair bit to this part of it, in collaboration with another editor who was keen on Entasis and found the academic sources for it for the article. It also draws on some material I contributed to the Wikipedia article on Notes inégales
One starting point is to notice that we rely on a sense of rhythm to perform ordinary activities such as walking, running, hammering nails or chopping vegetables. Even speech and thought has a rhythm of sorts. So one way to work on rhythms is to work on bringing these into music, becoming a "rhythm antenna" in Andrew Lewis's words.
Until the nineteenth century in Europe, people used to sing as they worked, in time to the rhythms of their work. Musical rhythms were part of daily life, Cecil Sharp collected some of these songs before they were forgotten. For more about this see Work song and Sea shanties. In many parts of the world music is an important part of daily life even today. There are many accounts of people (especially tribal people) who sing frequently and spontaneously in their daily life, as they work, and as they engage in other activities.
"Benny Wenda, a Lani man from the highlands, is a Papuan leader now in exile in the UK, and a singer. There are songs for everything, he says: songs for climbing a mountain, songs for the fireside, songs for gardening. "Since people are interconnected with the land, women will sing to the seed of the sweet potato as they plant it, so the earth will be happy." Meanwhile, men will sing to the soil until it softens enough to dig." (Songs and freedom in West Papua)
Musicians may also work on strengthening their sense of pulse using inner sources, such as breath, and subdividing breaths. Or work with the imagination, imagining a pulse. They may also work with their heart beat, and rhythms in their chest muscles in the same way, ( Andrew Lewis Rhythm - What it is and How to Improve Your Sense of It)
Another thing they do is to play music in their mind's ear along with the rhythms of walking or other daily life rhythms. Other techniques include hearing music in ones mind's ear first before playing it. Musicians can deal with timing and tempo glitches by learning to hear a perfect performance in their mind's ear first.
UNEVEN NOTES IN MEDIEVAL MUSIC - WAS IT REGULAR LIKE MODERN JAZZ, OR CONTINUOUS SURPRISE?
In some styles of music such as early music notes inégales (according to one minority view interpretation) it can be appropriate to use a different approach that doesn't work so much with a sense of inner pulse and instead works on ideas of gestures and is more closely related to rhythms of speech and poetry. Ideas from this approach can be useful for all styles of music.
The basic ideas are -
- Notes should be subtly unequal - having no three notes the same helps to keep the music alive and interesting and helps prevent any feeling of sameness and boredom in the music - the idea of "Entasis"
"This technique is especially challenging in its application, because musicians today are so rigidly trained in metrical regularity.
Yet, like the beating of the heart, the musical pulse needs to fluctuate in speed as the emotional content of the music fluctuates. Like the natural shifting accents in speech, musical accents need to shift according to the meaning being expressed. To feel perfect, music must be metrically imperfect."
- Notes and musical phrases can be organized in gestures – particular patterns of rhythm that come naturally – rather than strict measures.
- Individual notes can be delayed slightly – when you expect a particular note e.g. at the end of a musical phrase – just waiting a moment or two before playing the note:
"The cognitive partner of hesitation is anticipation: anticipation is created by building up assumption on assumption about what will happen. When the event which should occur fails to happen at the expected time, there exists a moment of disappointment.
Disappointment, however, is soon transformed into a rush of pleasure when the anticipated event is consummated. The art is always in the timing."
- Notes played together can be allowed to go somewhat out of time with each other in a care-free fashion "Sans souci".
"When the alignment of notes in the score suggests that they be performed strictly and simultaneously, they may be purposely jumbled or played in an irregular or a staggering manner to create a careless (sans souci) effect. This technique gives music a feeling of relaxed effortlessness"
The quotes there are from Marianne Ploger and Keith Hill The Craft of Musical Communication Orphei Organi Antiqui 2005
This just touches on some of the ideas; for more details, see their article.
This is a minority view on interpretation of Notes inégales but well worth a mention here because of its different approach to musical time and rhythm, and its relevance to the way rhythms can be practised.
THE MECHANICAL CLOCKS INTERPRETATION
The more generally accepted view is that Notes inégales were played with the same amount of swing nearly all the time, like modern Jazz.
The main evidence from this comes from early mechanical clocks that were constructed to play Notes Inegales, and a treatise on the technique of pinning for mechanical organs. See: Dirk Moflants The Performance of Notes Inegales: The Influence of Tempo, Musical Structure, and Individual Performance Styleon Expressive Timing Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 28, No. 5, June 2011
But on the other hand - that might just be because they were clocks, it might not reflect the way that ordinary musicians of the time played the music.
APPLYING THESE IDEAS TO YOUR OWN PLAYING IN ANY MUSICAL STYLE
Whatever your views about correct way to play Notes inégales, the ideas can be refreshing if you've been brought up on the notion that "perfect musical time" is in some way, precise and repeatable like a metronome, also great things to explore in your own rhythms!
When it works well, the basic feeling is one of continuous refreshment and surprise and enjoyment as you play, in every single note you play, it's like a new thing, newly minted, born for the first time in this moment. This is felt by both performer and listener.
Get it wrong though and the music limps and drags and is just confusing to listen to. You need to feel the music and the surprise in every note, and then the unevenness of the Entasis comes through from that, if you try instead to play in a random unpredictable way just for the sake of it - that's when it goes wrong. It's a fine balance. However, many musicians, have this naturally, without thought, like breathing. Perhaps you have this, in your playing, already . As you work on your rhythmic precision, then you need to take care to continue to encourage this side of your playing as well, that's why I've given it as much space or more as the section on metronome practice.
More about it, from the same article as before:
"Entasis is an ancient Greek term meaning tensioning. Speech that is delivered in a metrically perfect manner has the power to cause the listener's brain to shutdown and cease processing the meaning of what is being said...all within a few seconds of hearing such speech. The human brain needs the condition of constant or stable irregularity to remain alert and attentive. Regularity eliminates the feeling of discomfort which chaos, the erratic and irregular, often creates. The balance in tension between the feeling of predictability, which constancy (stability) provides, and the feeling of anticipation, which irregularity and unpredictability creates, is a state of entasis. (The opposite of entasis is stasis or staticness.) In normal human speech, Entasis is brought about by the flow of thought, and this flow is both irregular and constant. So it must be in music.
The French, in the 17th and 18th centuries, understood the importance of entasis; musicians who wrote about inégal were likely referring to this concept. The word actually means rough, irregular, unequal, but the conventional interpretation of the word betrays the real meaning by forcing it to conform to the present fashion for perfect metricallity in performance practice of old music. That interpretation suggests that inégal means perfectly regular “limping.” Had the French writers meant that they might have used the term for limping or the phrase égal inégal
...
Metrical exactitude in musical performance also guarantees that most music is only heard but not listened to. It is the embodiment of slavishness in music, i.e. the music is the slave of the beat when it should be its master, exactly the opposite of what C.P.E. Bach suggested when he wrote that one should "endeavor to avoid everything mechanical and slavish. Play from the soul, not like a trained bird."[6]
This technique is especially challenging in its application, because musicians today are so rigidly trained in metrical regularity. Yet, like the beating of the heart, the musical pulse needs to fluctuate in speed as the emotional content of the music fluctuates. Like the natural shifting accents in speech, musical accents need to shift according to the meaning being expressed. To feel perfect, music must be metrically imperfect.."
If you do use a metronome, and many do, and they find it helpful for rhythmic precision - be sure to realize you don't need a metronome to have a wonderful sense of rhythm. Many musical cultures with a great sense of rhythm never use the metronome at all!
I've worked this post up into a much longer article which you might enjoy on my Science20 column here:
Metronomes - Do You Need Them? And A Metronome Using Conducting Techniques For Visual Precision
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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