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Hi,
What can you suggest as a metronome substitution which is easy to use, can set any time signatures, it's small, have real drums sounds and rhythms built in to play along with acoustic grand piano?
thanks

If you have an iPad check out the iRealB app. It's pretty awesome. It wil play drums, piano and bass and the cool thing is that you can load up chords changes and it will play them. Once you install it it's a piece of cake to load 2,000 plus chord charts. I like it quite a bit.

thanks but I don't use iDevices only Droid.

Google: Hammerhead rythmn station. One can "save as" files if one creates a prefered track.

Band in a Box, version with real tracks. For jazz - it's a beast. Based on samples and real musician playing, so it sounds great, whether you turn on the bass, piano or drums (or ukulele for instance). There are many styles and any tempo/time signature etc. Unfortunately I can't afford it, but it plays well. On the head bass plays half feeling and drums play on hihat, when it ends during the solo bass plays walking and drummer goes to the ride. When you lower the tempo, drummer plays brushes and generally every instrument plays differently. Great tool.

Well then get it on Droid...Same app.

I see you guys prefer software solutions, how about boss drum machines anybody uses them?

the best machine for these kinds of things is the one you have! be it a metronome, drum machine, or just a willing practice partner! learning to play in time is the important part! (which you obviously know!)

setting a metronome at 4 times slower tempo (like 15, 20, 25) works as well

Actually, for practice i use a Taktel mini. Wind-up, no batteries required. Plus the click really cuts through. i think it's important to be able to hear the nome & instrument in a ballance.

+1 for analog. My wife bought me a nice Wittner that has been delightful to use.

It's still nice to play with other instruments though. Hard to practice piano fills and riffs against a metronome alone. Even "Band in a Box" kinds of apps can be very nice for that. And I've seen guys playing gigs in restaurants where that was basically their whole schtick.

Zapper, if you can live with a module, how about the Alesis drum machines? I think they're the SR16 or SR18. They can be picked up used on Ebay if you don't want/need brand new.

Playing slow is dangerous, you can fall asleep...

I agree, it's way more inspirational and fun to play with some real rhythms then just with dry metronome. Boss dr-880 is actually pretty cool although pricey.

I'll second Band in a Box. It's definitely not a perfect program (it looks like they haven't updated the user interface since 1998 and most of the program's features are organized really poorly).

That being said the sounds are good and it is flexible. I prefer real musician's too but at 3am when I'm feeling inspired or want to practice it's a nice substitute.

I have a SR-16 AND Band-in-a-Box :-)

The SR-16 is great for live performance. I use it with a twin footrswitch, one for start-stop, one for tap-tempo. The trick is to program simple patterns - working with a drum box is GOING to sound mechanical and repetitious, so keep it in a background, supportive role.

BiaB is rather overkill for just a drum track, but if you want to practice your jazz improvisation it's remarkably useful! It's also easy and quick to create a structured track with fills and stops. And, as music programs go, it's cheap. You don't need the expensive optional add-ons, the features we need are basic functions that have been in the program for years.

And that's obvious that having a laptop you don't have to pay for another box, electronics, processor, memory. Software is much more flexible.

and much more difficult to use, longer time to start it up, prone to freezing and way less stable. I just want to press button and have drummer playing with me. I don't want boot a laptop, looking for a program and wait for it to load. Finally when it's loaded an OS message pops up - "updates available" or other annoying text. So no, thanks for software solutions...

Wow you don't like anyone's suggestions. Why don't you tell us which one is best?

You are right in your points, that's advantage of drum machine. I don't know any, I play mostly with my dear metronome.

Consider the DR-880 drum machine from Boss/Roland. I got one about 4 years ago to accompany myself playing at church as we did not have an band.

It’s all you need, its mainly marketed at & used by guitarists but it’s a phenomenal machine for accompaniment for any one.

http://www.roland.com/products/en/DR-880/

There are many demos on YouTube

here a few I think you should view.

http://www.youtube.com/user/rolandiberia/videos?query=dr-880

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBZFlsrrWrg

Peace.