One of the most basic skills needed by every musician is the ability to hold onto a steady pulse no matter what is happening on the surface of the music. It is relatively straightforward to feel the three main beats in bar 11 from the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Op 109 (first bar below); rather more challenging in bar 12 (second bar).
To help us internalise a basic pulse there are many exercises we can practise with the metronome. Choose any scale you like, set the metronome to somewhere around 60 bpm playing one note per click for one octave up, then back down, before switching seamlessly and without stopping to twice the speed (one click every other note) over two octaves – up and down, as before.
