BARBARA the Metronome app for iPhone and iPad

The special feature of BARBARA is that it can handle mixed meters, which means the ability to play bars with changing time signatures. As it is a programmable metronome, it has turned out that BARBARA offers many possibilities for both professional and less professional musicians to practice.

As musicians most often need the basic metronomic functionalities, 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.

BARBARA is a programmable metronome, but, please, do not confuse this with computer programming. Programming BARBARA means just pressing buttons marked with familiar musical symbols, and youll see it is easy. By pressing the buttons you create sequences of bars that BARBARA plays.

BARBARA the Metronome does not just tick. It plays bars. BARBARA has several pages of buttons with which you can make it play sequences of bars with notes like quarter notes, eight notes, sixteenth notes, and even thirty-second notes. You can specify how many times, or minutes, each bar is played.

There are rest buttons with which you can specify a certain kind of silence between played bars. With tempo buttons you can set or change the tempo of the metronome in any position in a sequence 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 create a sequence in which the primary metronome sound is played for some minutes, and after that a few bars are played with the alternative metronome sound. When this kind of sequence is repeated, there is a warm-up routine in which the musician can move to a different warm-up exercise when she or he hears the alternative metronome sound. Especially some drum teachers recommend a set of exercises in which each exercise lasts a few minutes.

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.

When sequences of bars are repeated, it is possible to increase or decrease the tempo for each new repetition.

BARBARA will store the sequences of bars that you create. You can name your sequences and play them later. The metronome app contains many demo sequences that will help you to learn how the metronome can be used.