That’d help with the homesickness. But you’ll need an accordeon tuned so wet you have to towel down after you play it.
Seriously, I think playing with a metronome is a good idea. Azalin’s suggestion that you play along with records is also a good idea but you’d need slow down equipment to do that in the early stages of learning a tune.
I’ve had several metronomes (i built my first one, and installed it in an old transitor radio’s case). But i prefer the mechanical ones. I love to watch the pendulum swing while i practice; it gives me visual feedback too, in ways that an electronic can’t match.
Here’s a source for a free software metronome. http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~tuner/tuner_e.html
Here’s another free digital metronome that I like a lot. As (accurately) described by its inventors, "The AMAZING METRONOME for Windows is a very useful digital tool for all musicians.
This downloadable metronome features two separate tracks with main and sub beats sounding simultaneously in a wide range of time signatures and possible beat subdivisions along with adjustable tempo settings and a selection of sampled percussion sounds."
You can get a copy at http://www.sheetmusicnow.com/tools/metronome.exe
I hate metronomes - we’ve been forced to use them when we play for the feis. After playing for so many years with real rhythm I find it very difficult and distracting to play along to a metronome. (but perhaps it’s a case of can’t teach an old dog new tricks)
Playing with others, be it recordings or in person, is the best way to learn the rhythm. Tapping your foot should keep you in line. I encourage you to play with recordings or other musicians in order to get the tempo and rhythm together. And it’s more fun. Listen to LOTS and LOTS of music to get it in your head, as others have suggested. Oh, and give yourself a break and give yourself five or so years to get it down.
Absolutely. Nuff said.
This is especially true for bodhran thumpers. It should be illegal to sell a bodhran without a metronome (yeah, yeah or a pen knife… I know already!).
I haven’t used the metronome much in my whistle practicing, although I probably should. I use it mainly on technical studies with trumpet playing. It is really helpful in keeping me in check, particularly when faced with lots of runs or dotted rhythms that might prompt me to rush and play them bit unevenly (i.e., the infamous affliction called “black note anxiety”!)
Actually, I did a very primitive piece of software (Windows) a few weeks ago to help you find out if your rhythm is allright. You can tape yourself play a tune, and then listen to the recording while using the software. You click or hit any key every time there’s a beat, and the software is going to give you statistics on the average beat per minute, so every 10 beats you’re gonna have a result, so that at the end you see the progress. Anyway, it could be helpful if you’re curious to see how bad or good you’re doing in term of rhythm.
http://www.metayer.info/tempo/tempoanalyzer.exe
I found out I was allright if I kept conscious about my rhythm, but I’m sure that if I forget about it then all hell breaks loose 
I also wonder if there’s some software out there that can actually analyze a track and analyze it’s rhythm, I’m sure it wouldnt be impossible with sound recognition.
I really think that the best way to learn the rhythm and the tempo is to play with other people, not machines. Find a teacher - and give yourself time.
Ah, well, there’s the challenge. If you have any extras up there, can you send them around?
I did looked around on the internet today for other people to play with here in Stillwater, Oklahoma. 
Depressing… looks like the closest session happens every other week sixty miles away. But, on the bright side I still believe that if I go wander around the music department on campus I may find somebody who plays irish music or even tin whistle.
I first saw a tin whistle close to St. Paul. I was up in Ely last summer guiding canoe trips for the Boy Scouts. Somebody had just bought a whistle, and couldn’t play anything on it yet. (I think it was a Clarke.) I saw the whistle and said, “Hey! There’s something I could bring camping with me!”
In the fall, I listened to a lot of clips online and ordered a Susato. (None of the local music stores offer any tin whistles.) Now I’ve got a Dixon with which I’m very happy. 
My goal is to learn enough tunes by the time this summer is here that I don’t drive my Boy Scouts ,or myself, nuts playing the same things over and over!
For now it looks like I’ll be playing with books and CDs, and soon a metronome sometimes, instead of people. It’s been a lot of fun learning that way so far.
Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!
I don’t know where Stillwater is in relation to Tulsa, but I do have a friend in Tulsa who plays fiddle whom I could get you in touch with, if you’re interested.
I’ve been thinking about this, Az, and I was wondering if you might get distorted results from a device like this. I’m not entirely sure but this was the possible problem I saw. Although ITM players don’t push or drag the beat to anywhere near the same extent as jazz and blues players, they do phrase a tiny bit off the beat deliberately some times. In particular, I think that to get lift, a player might push the beat ever so slightly for a few measures. I don’t have a way of checking this because there is nothing pronounced as with jazz and blues where the effect is obvious. That might mean that when you are pushing the beat, the gadget might tell you your rhythm was poor when it might not be.
In predigital days, rock drummers would even speed up and slow down a bit to build and release tension. This wouldn’t be a good idea for Irish dance music and it’s what you want your gadget to pick up. These days, almost every record producer uses a click track which is, in effect, a metronome. It makes digital editing so much easier. So drummers no longer speed up and slow down. They have told me though that they try to achieve the same effect by pushing or dragging the beat, hence my concern about that devise.
Wombat,
I’m really not knowledgeable enough about ITM to have an accurate answer, but my understanding is that you will get this special swing and lift by making certain notes longer and shortening others, not by changing the rhythm itself. But then maybe I don’t understand exactly what you’re saying. You also have step dancers who require pretty accurate timing, and I know of at least one musician who’s going to use a metronome for certain type of step dances because having a steady rhythm is very, very important for the dance.
I know that the tool I wrote is looking at the average beats per minutes, so being faster for a little while wouldnt make much of a difference.
I think there’s a facility like that in the sequencer I use. It also has an equivalent of your tap-the-keyboard tempo-grabber. The one I use is Magix Music Maker. A relatively cheap, but very capable sequencer that I’ve stuck with through several versions.
I think that both Az and Wombat have valid points here which I believe boil down to the same thing.
Musicians who play together on a regular basis develop an empathy with each other that borders on the telepathic.Minute changes in the length of the note or similar tiny variations in the rhythm combine to give a tune it’s swing or ,if you like ,its character.
An almost indiscernable push or pull on the beat here and there will combine with a similar stretching of the notes duration to give something that cannot really be written down for someone else to play,and this is what makes the difference between a cold dull rendition of a tune and a heart warming foot tapping enjoyable feast of good playing may it be Jazz,Blues or Irish Trad.
This is what the conducter does in Classical music and would explain why one version of a Symphony is more highly rated than another.After all the notes are all the same in any classical work.
Slan,
D.
Az, let me try to explain again although Dubhlinn clearly gets what I’m saying. I’m really not sure what is being measured here so maybe we have crossed wires. I think that, to be useful, something like that would not tell you you are slowing down by two beats every minute. You simply aren’t going to be out by that much. What you need is software that tells you where you are placing your notes in relation to the beat ..slightly early ..slightly late ..a bit of both ..and when.
Even if you had that, I’m not sure it would be all that helpful. A good player might push the beat sometimes and delay at others ..then you’d get the averaging giving you the right answer ..nothing wrong with the rhythm. But a bad player whose deviations are random and don’t give lift might average out too and then you’d get the wrong answer. Also, I think that some players might push the beat much more than they drag it. I mean they might push sometimes and play on the beat at others. There would be nothing wrong with that. As an example, I’d guess that ‘caffeinated’ sound Conal O Grada gets is the result of pushing the beat much more than people usually do. So if a player didn’t average out that might depend on their style and not on their having bad rhythm. They might still always know very well where the beat is.
All that said, I might simply not be understanding your proposal. Still, even if I’ve got you completely wrong, the stuff about where you accent in relation to the beat isn’t wrong so I guess it won’t be doing any harm.
I have heard many trad musicians who drive the beat by coming down hard and a touch ahead of the beat.
Judging from the recordings I have, this seems to be a fairly common practice.
–James
Well, I think you’re talking about phrasing, and I’m talking about rhythm. I think a tool can help you work on your rhythm, but I don’t think any tool could help you work on phrasing or “swing”. Even though a tool might tell you where notes are pushed, or a little bit longer or shorter, it doesnt mean you’ll understand it. I think it’s only by listening to the real stuff that you’ll get some sens out of it.
I agree with PhilO’s original suggestion about the Korg metronome. Nice price especially.
It’s easy to think that using a metronome will make you sound robotic but I think you should be able to keep a constant beat and then you can work on swing or nuances such as slowing down or speeding up slightly.
What I’ve found is that when I’m playing I’ll slow down at the harder parts and then after even learning the tune still do this. Then if I try to play with a metronome this becomes painfully obvious. It will be the same while playing with others. The whole group will slow down but it’s not that they’re feeling the ebb and flow of the piece but that everyone is slowing down at the harder parts so no one gets left behind. Bringing out a metronome at this point will actually make people mad because they thought they were playing along just fine and suddenly it’s a bunch of beginners.
So even if you’re against using a metronome, try using one and see if you can keep time to it. --mike