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Dotted notes can be broken up into their components:
Dotted quarter = quarter + eighth = three eighths long
Dotted eighth = three sixteenths long
Double-dotted quarter = quarter + eighth + sixteenth = seven sixteenths long.
...etc. You have to spread the notes over the measure according to their length, recognising that there's always the same time in each measure, whether used by sounded notes or rests (or a mix...). This always works because if a sound extends beyond the current measure, ties are used to extend the sound over the bar instead.
Thirty-seconds are too short to be counted! The best we can do is:
Quarters = 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 ...
Eighths = 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and ...
Sixteenths = 1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a 1 e and ...
For thirty-seconds, just count two for each sixteenth.
Playing on the beat with a metronome can take getting used to; your mind gets that "that thing is drifting again..." feeling, each time you lose your own timing. Persistence will pay off here. Try using a smartphone metronome (e.g. Metronomerous) which gives accented beats (1, 2, 3, 4) or varied sounds to give you the up-beat in each measure, or whichever beat you need to accentuate.
I hope I've understood your questions correctly; my music theory is from England in the 1970s where thirty-second notes were known as demisemiquavers (and 64ths were hemidemisemiquavers).
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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I had been mildly mystified by this in the past - playing in a group is easier than playing to a metronome/track etc.
I think groups work a little like these metronomes - everyone exercises a little bit of personal self-control within the group and the whole comes together.
and an even bigger one: -
The mobile base turns them into one connected system. If they stood on a solid base, they'd just remain as individuals and not synchronise.
Andrew
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Fiddlerman said
This only proves to me that these metronomes are not very accurate. LOL
The individual metronomes are self-consistent in period when working alone, but respond to each other through the connecting mutual substrate they sit on. This is a consequence of resonance: they shove each other a little this way and that and these little nudges make the individual phases lag or lead (as appropriate) until they chime together like a choir.
When I taught teams of three Sea Cadets to pipe with boatwain's calls together, it was just a matter of time before their widely individual idea of pitch came together: first, discord, then a roaring beat note, then a fluttering as they came into unison. A couple of hours practice later, and they start, change pitch and stop as one. A tray full of metronomes is a neat trick, but a piping team (or a string section...) is a wonder of nature.
Did you ever watch a murmuration of starlings and just wonder, how?
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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Fiddlerman said
I understand that, however, if they are affected by the swing, they are not perfect. The true test would be to set them on a stable surface and set them off at relatively the same time/beat. I doubt that they would be 100% accurate. Most digital ones should be. At least the best ones.
The words "they form a system" are important. If you put a mechanical metronome on a wobbly surface, it will be as unstable as the surface. Hold one in your hand and wobble it as it is going. It's not a sign of its imperfection.
In the same way when you walk on a travellator in an airport, your speed relative to the room depends on your speed and the travellator's speed and which direction each is going in.
But the wobble of the metronomes' platform is a very controlled wobble which is governed by the combined reactions to all their pendulum swings, and so they eventually move as a coherent group.
The absolute frequency and phase of a metronome's oscillation is a function of the pendulum weight and length and any oscillation of the platform it is standing on. As I said, if you put them on a solid floor, they won't form a system any more, and there will be differences in frequency and phase of their oscillations. They are certainly "imperfect" to that extent. But there wouldn't be much point in their being perfect - it wouldn't benefit a musician.
@Peter yes, sympathetic phase locking is something that happens in electrical oscillators too, I vaguely recall - they don't have to be part of a system that is designed to be a phase-locked loop - they can be independent. But don't push me on that, as I'm very hazy. But if you do push me, it may jog my memory. Not that I'm suggesting your trainee bosuns will literally be whistling in phase, lol!
Andrew
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Fiddlerman said
I understand that, however, if they are affected by the swing, they are not perfect. The true test would be to set them on a stable surface and set them off at relatively the same time/beat. I doubt that they would be 100% accurate. Most digital ones should be. At least the best ones.
Indeed, constrained by their mutual frame of reference they will eventually swing together - it's inevitable. Deny them that communication, and they will just do their own thing and show how well / poorly they were made and set up.
Digital metronomes (this includes all phone apps) are reliant on a quartz clock generator for their frequency source. These have better stability, precision and repeatability than mechanical metronomes, but even quartz crystal resonators have limitations. Short of me citing papers by Ulrich Rhode and the like you will just have to take my work on this. The best digital clock sources are phase-locked to shell transitions in rubidium or caesium, and the second-rate ones are oven-stabilised quartz; your clip-on tuner of telephone are certainly not to this standard.
@Gordon Shumway - Yes. (I'm not going to bite). But I prefer to think nowadays about my internal sense of pitch pulling my fingertips to and fro to get the stop length required for the instantaneous musical moment. I am my own PLL, tuned by wetware.
I'm beginning to wonder what @bunify is making of all this. Have we answered your question, or should we apologise for hijacking the thread? Je suis desolé.
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
Peter said .....
I'm beginning to wonder what @bunify is making of all this. Have we answered your question, or should we apologise for hijacking the thread? Je suis desolé.
LOL - yo tambien, I was wondering as well - but - it's what we do !!!!!
I seriously recommend not copying my mistakes. D'oh -
Please make your own, different mistakes, and help us all learn :-)
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He was born on the Great Orme, overlooking Llandudno. He was vaguely annoyed when I went to night school to learn Welsh; I am a Saesneg through and through, after all.
Free translation: "It could be worse, I could use the tongue of my father. Speak Welsh, you?"
Again, apologies to @bunify for turning an excellent question into a weird divertimento.
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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Yr wyf wedi colli'r rhan fwyaf o'r tafod Cymreig dros y 35 mlynedd diwethaf.
These days, however, everyone's a Welshman with Google on-hand. My dad was born a Welshman, but both his parents were English, from the north (Manchester and Rotherham).
Peter
"It is vain to do with more that which can be done with less" - William of Ockham
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in" - Frederick the Great
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