Posted by Jim at March 10th, 2007

My wife plays music instruments (flute, piano and voice). I do too (bass guitar, trumpet, a small amount of piano, and voice), but unlike her I haven’t done much playing lately. I’m thinking I’d like to buy a new amp one of these days and then I’d at least be able to practice bass, but I haven’t yet. I’m also tempted to try to buy a bass Chapman Stick.

But back to the main point… My wife actually plays things regularly and thus bought a metronome recently.

For those of you who have forgotten, a metronome keeps an inhumanly steady beat, helping a musician learn how to play with the correct rhythm.

Unlike the metronomes I remember, it’s electronic and has a digital readout. What I find particularly odd is that the metronome never stops running. You just choose to have the sound off or on. Any time you look at the lcd, however, you will always find it on.

That’s when it works correctly.

When it doesn’t work correctly, the sound doesn’t stop either. You continually listen to a high pitch followed by three lower pitches (at least with 4/4 time) and it never stops. Even when you press the sound button, it stays on or stops briefly, but then just turns itself on again for no good reason.

Thus I spent much of this afternoon suddenly hearing…

High pitch
Low pitch
Low pitch
Low pitch

… in perfect 4/4 time. At the moment it started, I would run toward the metronome, press the “sound” button, hoping that the sound would end immediately.

It seldom did.

More often than not, I would press all the buttons on the stupid thing and it might for some random reason decide to briefly stop.

It would start again shortly thereafter.

After a few hours of random metronome noise I began to consider taking outside and placing it on the porch. Beating it with a hammer or taking it back to the store where Kristen bought it sounded like good alternate ideas.

Late in the afternoon, it occurred to Kristen to open the thing up and pull out the battery. Once we put the battery back in, the problems ceased entirely. Thus, it’s fixed.

For now.