Post by creamburmese on Feb 5, 2016 20:43:10 GMT
I use my metronome quite a lot - probably not when I should (like practicing exercises) but when practicing orchestra parts - there's a fine talent involved in counting the spaces where you're not playing with a view to coming in at the right place! Anyway - I had been using a very basic metronome that drives me slightly nuts because I have difficulty reading the tempo markings. And though the app on iphone does a good job, for some reason it's always too much trouble to get it out and set it up the fiddle with the dinky iphone buttons. So I decided to buy a decent metronome and with some hesitation plonked down the money on the KORG KDM-2. www.korg.com/us/products/tuners/kdm_2/
It was on sale from Ama*on (only $34.99 instead of 59.99) which helped. A big draw before purchase was the impressive ability to adjust it to various rhythms, including salsa/bossa nova. I had some doubts because a number of the Amazon reviews mentioned the wheel you turn to adjust the tempo was "stiff" and difficult to turn because it just had a small depression in it for purchase. Several people had found the need to modify it - for example by drilling
a hole and inserting a pin to grab the wheel with, or using epoxy to stick a button on it. I noticed they didn't send the metronomes back though... .
Anyway I really like it. It has several sound settings but no ability to adjust the volume, which is loud, though some of the sounds are more penetrating than others. I find the regular click sound is perfect - you can adjust whether the first beat has a different tone, and set it up to 9 beats per measure tempo of 30 - 252. It reportedly has 19 different possible settings - although it was a selling point I haven't actually tried to use any of the other rhythms apart from a basic click. You can set it to jump to traditional metronome intervals, or to go up in single digits, which are easy to see on a large display. And despite the other reviewers' problems with turning the wheel to set the tempo, I find it to be no problem - it's certainly not stiff - perhaps if you had bolted it to something and were trying to apply pressure with your little finger without holding it, it might prove more difficult, but so far as I can see the wheel is easy to turn, even one-handed, and is calibrated well so finding the right tempo is painless. In fact I find the whole thing well designed -it's big enough that you aren't messing around trying to find a tiny little button and having a wheel means no pressing endlessly to get to certain tempo - in that respect it's very old fashioned and ergonomic. There is a BIG buttons on the top to start and stop it - you don't even have to do more than look out of the corner of your eye to hit it, though the on/off button is rather insignificantly placed on the front at the bottom so I usually forget to turn it off. It will be interesting to see if the batteries run out fast - the reviews said the batteries last forever but maybe they, unlike me, remembered to turn it off. The most useful bonus feature is the tap tempo setting - you can press a big button on the top in time with music and it displays that tempo - surprisingly useful. The only changes I would make if I could would be to have an automatic shut off and adjustable volume level (i.e to reduce the volume when not wishing to disturb others). But overall I would buy it again in a heartbeat. And perhaps the most important selling point of all - it's so easy to use that I've found myself using a metronome much more...
It was on sale from Ama*on (only $34.99 instead of 59.99) which helped. A big draw before purchase was the impressive ability to adjust it to various rhythms, including salsa/bossa nova. I had some doubts because a number of the Amazon reviews mentioned the wheel you turn to adjust the tempo was "stiff" and difficult to turn because it just had a small depression in it for purchase. Several people had found the need to modify it - for example by drilling
a hole and inserting a pin to grab the wheel with, or using epoxy to stick a button on it. I noticed they didn't send the metronomes back though... . Anyway I really like it. It has several sound settings but no ability to adjust the volume, which is loud, though some of the sounds are more penetrating than others. I find the regular click sound is perfect - you can adjust whether the first beat has a different tone, and set it up to 9 beats per measure tempo of 30 - 252. It reportedly has 19 different possible settings - although it was a selling point I haven't actually tried to use any of the other rhythms apart from a basic click. You can set it to jump to traditional metronome intervals, or to go up in single digits, which are easy to see on a large display. And despite the other reviewers' problems with turning the wheel to set the tempo, I find it to be no problem - it's certainly not stiff - perhaps if you had bolted it to something and were trying to apply pressure with your little finger without holding it, it might prove more difficult, but so far as I can see the wheel is easy to turn, even one-handed, and is calibrated well so finding the right tempo is painless. In fact I find the whole thing well designed -it's big enough that you aren't messing around trying to find a tiny little button and having a wheel means no pressing endlessly to get to certain tempo - in that respect it's very old fashioned and ergonomic. There is a BIG buttons on the top to start and stop it - you don't even have to do more than look out of the corner of your eye to hit it, though the on/off button is rather insignificantly placed on the front at the bottom so I usually forget to turn it off. It will be interesting to see if the batteries run out fast - the reviews said the batteries last forever but maybe they, unlike me, remembered to turn it off. The most useful bonus feature is the tap tempo setting - you can press a big button on the top in time with music and it displays that tempo - surprisingly useful. The only changes I would make if I could would be to have an automatic shut off and adjustable volume level (i.e to reduce the volume when not wishing to disturb others). But overall I would buy it again in a heartbeat. And perhaps the most important selling point of all - it's so easy to use that I've found myself using a metronome much more...
Jo whoever he is.
