Eggfish Metronome User Guide

1. What is a Metronome?

A metronome is a tool used in musical training to mark rhythm and tempo, with its core function being to quantify playing speed through BPM (Beats Per Minute). Just as heartbeat determines human movement rhythm, BPM is the "pulse" of music. The metronome helps performers develop stable internal rhythm sense through continuous mechanical sounds.

Just as fitness requires weight training to enhance muscle memory, using a metronome is training your "rhythm muscles." When you can maintain musical expressiveness within strict beats, you truly master the freedom of rhythm.

2. What Makes Eggfish Metronome Special?

The core difference between Eggfish Metronome and ordinary metronomes is that it is specifically designed to address practical pain points in instrument practice. It provides custom rhythm editing functionality that helps learners master correct rhythms and develop good practice habits.

Moreover, Eggfish Metronome will integrate more practical scenarios in the future, developing more effective functions to help learners. Simply put, Eggfish Metronome is a user-friendly metronome specifically designed for instrument learners.

3. How to Use the Custom Features of Eggfish Metronome?

First, click to expand "Advanced Features." Custom rhythm consists of three parts: music score, operation buttons, and note buttons. When you click different note buttons, the corresponding notes appear on the music score. Simultaneously, Eggfish Metronome supports undo, redo operations, clearing the music score, and randomly generating music scores.

For note buttons, Eggfish Metronome divides them into different note groups:

1. Rests: Include rests of different time values that don't produce sound.
2. Basic Notes: Include basic notes of different time values, as well as dotted notes. Any rhythm pattern can be composed through random combinations of basic notes.
3. Common Rhythm Patterns: Cover different common rhythm patterns with a total duration of quarter notes. Quickly edit required rhythm patterns.
4. Triplets: Various triplet combinations. After selecting the triplet note button, you need to choose half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, or sixteenth notes to confirm the triplet's time value.
5. Ties: Connect two non-rest notes. When played, the duration equals the sum of the durations of the two connected notes. First select the note to be connected, then select the tie, and finally select the note to be connected to complete the tie connection.

Eggfish Metronome's custom features are very user-friendly:

1. Automatically detects currently available note buttons. If a note cannot be selected, it will be grayed out.
2. Click the spacebar on the keyboard or double-tap the phone screen to trigger play or pause.
3. Undo and redo functions can also be operated using keyboard undo and redo keys.
4. When you want to explore possibilities brought by different rhythm patterns, you can use the random function to generate a rhythm pattern score.

Why Create Eggfish Metronome?

I want to start with why we should use a metronome.

Regarding this question, I'd like to share my personal instrument learning experience first.

Three years ago, to compensate for the fatigue and emptiness brought by work, I picked up an acoustic guitar. As a beginner, I wasn't accustomed to using a metronome but preferred to follow my feelings, enjoying it self-contentedly.

However, this self-satisfaction didn't last long. As the pieces I learned became more complex and rhythm patterns changed more frequently, I could clearly feel myself becoming more and more overwhelmed. I might barely manage to practice the entire piece, but the rhythm was always inconsistent—sometimes fast, sometimes slow—let alone playing with feeling and groove.

I naively believed that simply understanding note durations would allow me to perfectly interpret sheet music. But as the pieces became more difficult, my rhythm completely collapsed. The root problem was: I had never established a solid foundation. When I tried to use a metronome again, I found I couldn't keep up with the beats. This became a vicious cycle: the more difficult, the more resistant.

Until I heard one sentence that enlightened me: Practicing without a metronome is just playing with the instrument. This made me determined to conquer this mountain called "metronome."

But honestly: practicing with a metronome is really torturous! Syncopation, dots, ties, anacrusis... so complex it drives you crazy!

One day, an idea popped into my head: Why not create a metronome that allows free rhythm arrangement to assist beginners like me in correctly keeping rhythm and gradually getting used to using a metronome?

Thus, Eggfish Metronome was born.

My original intention in designing Eggfish Metronome was to provide an auxiliary tool to help instrument enthusiasts establish good practice habits and develop a good sense of rhythm.

Practice Recommendations

Here are my personal recommendations for practicing with Eggfish Metronome:

1. Familiarize with Melody First, Then Follow Metronome: When approaching a new piece, don't rush to use the metronome. First get familiar with the melody, then follow the metronome.
2. Start Slow, Gradually Increase: When using a metronome, first adjust to a suitable BPM, starting from a slow tempo and gradually increasing.
3. Break Down Practice: For phrases with complex rhythm patterns, use custom arrangement functionality. First follow the correct rhythm multiple times. After mastering the correct rhythm, be sure to return to the regular metronome.
4. Reasonable Time Allocation: Always allocate some practice time with the metronome, but there's no need to use it throughout the entire session. On one hand, this might reduce interest in practice; on the other hand, everyone's understanding of a piece is different. With a good sense of rhythm established, subjective rhythm deviations due to different emotional interpretations are acceptable (this is also why MIDI cannot replace performers).
5. Cultivate Internal Rhythm Sense: The ultimate goal of using a metronome is to cultivate inner rhythm sense, making the metronome a verification tool rather than a dependency.

Conclusion

A metronome is not a constraint but a ladder to help you achieve true musical freedom. When you can express yourself freely within rigorous rhythm, that sense of achievement is worth all the effort.

This article is written by the Eggfish Studio, hoping to help more music enthusiasts.