A Traditional Metronome

Although BARBARA is designed to help with mixed meters, it is easy to use it as a 'traditional' metronome. For example, when a single 4/4 bar is defined and the Loop button is pressed, BARBARA will play the 4/4 rhythm.

The easiest way to use BARBARA as a traditional metronome is to use the Quick Start button that is marked with two dots. The following video demonstrates this.

Rests

In addition to the buttons for bars, BARBARA has buttons with rest symbols. It is thus possible to create sequences of bars that contain silence.

The following is a sequence with whole rest.

If the Loop button is pressed when the above simple sequence is programmed into BARBARA, the metronome will play the 4/4 rhythm so that every 4th bar is silent.

The sound would be the following.

Alternative Sounds

BARBARA has buttons with light numbers to make the primary metronome sounds. Then there are buttons with dark numbers which make alternative, or secondary, metronome sounds.

The following sequence plays 4/4 rhythm so that the first bar is played with alternative sound, and the three subsequent bars are played with primary sound.

The above sequence would make the following sound after the Loop button is pressed:

If a musician would like to play four 4/4 bars so that only the first beat of the the first bar is made with alternative sound, then the sequence could be the following.

The improved sequence would make the following sound when repeated.

BARBARA can use 'bars' with numbers like 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. These 'bars' have one as the upper numeral. They correspond to notes in music. With these 'bars' it is possible to construct 'artificial' bars with any time signature. The 'bars' with grey background produce the tock sounds, and non-grey 'bars' make tick sounds.

Lists

The sequences of bars that BARBARA plays are similar to files on a computer.

BARBARA will automatically store all sequences of bars that are programmed, and you can also name the sequences. All sequences can be found, and used later, by pressing the Lists button.

Drumming Warm-Up

If you search YouTube with words like drumming exercises minutes, you will find videos which recommend doing a set of exercises so that each exercise lasts a certain number of minutes.

BARBARA is a very suitable tool to give timing for such exercises. For example, the following sequence would play the standard metronome sound for 2 minutes, and after that a few bars would be played with a different metronome sound so that the drummer would know to move to the following exercise.

If the Loop button is used when the above sequence is visible, the sequence would be repeated until the Stop button is pressed.

In the following video the above sequence is developed further, so that the metronome stops automatically when all 2-minute exercises are completed.

If you watch the above video, you will notice that BARBARA calculates automatically that 70 bars are needed for 2-minute play when the tempo is 140.

Doing short warm-up exercises so that the metronome signals with a different sound when it is time to move to the next exercise can be a relaxing experience. The drummer can concentrate to the exercise, without worrying when to stop the current exercise. When the metronome stops automatically after a set of exercises, the drummer knows that all that was planned is done.

Increasing Tempo in Repeats

Here BARBARA is playing twelve 4/4 bars so that those bars are played 6 times, and after each playing the tempo is increased by 20.

The numbers above the bar symbols indicate what has been programmed. The numbers below the bar symbols are updated while BARBARA is operating.

The above sequence of bars is explained in more detail in the following picture.

Here you see how BARBARA can be made to repeat a certain sequence of bars, and how tempo can be increased for each repetition.

It is supposed here that a musician would like to practice twelve 4/4 bars of music in increasing tempo. In place of those twelve bars you could put a list of other bars.

By using full rests and alternative metronome sound, it is possible for the musician to prepare himself/herself before the twelve bars need to be played.

BARBARA can use two kinds of metronome sounds. The buttons with dark numbers produce the alternative sounds.