BARBARA the Metronome

Try BARBARA if time signatures change in the middle of the piece you are practicing, or if you want varying sounds from your metronome.

With BARBARA you can quickly create and play metronomic sequences of bars, and the bars can have different time signatures. You can put rests between bars, and you can use alternative metronome sounds for selected bars. You can specify how many times, or minutes, each bar is played.

BARBARA has many pages of buttons with which you can create sequences of bars. The buttons are marked with familiar musical symbols. BARBARA is a programmable metronome as its operation is based on the sequences of bars that are created with the buttons.

Although BARBARA can be made to play bars with different time signatures, musicians most often need the basic metronomic functionalities. For these purposes BARBARA has a Quick Start button with which you can quickly start making some traditional rhythms or a monotonous metronome sound. You can set the tempo and activate the metronome by tapping an empty area of the main screen.

With tempo buttons you can set or change the tempo of the metronome in any position in a sequence of bars. When tempo is programmed in a sequence, you can make BARBARA play a certain bar for a certain number of minutes. Special buttons exist to accelerate or slow down the tempo within a number of bars.

BARBARA can be made to tick certain sections of music with a different metronome sound. One way to utilise this feature is to use the secondary metronome sound to mark changes in a piece of music. In addition to traditional metronome sounds, BARBARA can play simple drum sounds. Sequences of metronomic bars can be created so that they contain both traditional metronome sounds and drum sounds.

There are several ways how BARBARA can repeat sequences of bars. You can even create a repeated sequence that is inside a longer sequence that is also repeated.

BARBARA will store the sequences of bars that you create. You can name your sequences and play them later. A named sequence can be sent to a friend in a message.

The metronome app contains many demo sequences that will help you to learn how the metronome can be used. You can copy and modify the demo sequences for your own purposes.