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- The metronome doesn't work (at all, or is not stable)
- Short answer: it's impossible to have a reliable metronome in an online game.
Long answer: the built-inTimerin Flash is quite poor. The most reliable solution I found is to use an animated gif; you can see this in the browser test.
Sadly, even an animated gif is not as reliable as I would hope. If your computer does not display the gif at a constant rate, the best I can do is encourage you to download MEAWS when it is ready, in Summer 2009.- It would be a lot easier if there was an audible metronome
- Definitely. However, this can only be done via flash, which requires the use of flash's unreliable timing. This is implemented in the Experimental version. If this works on your computer, great! If not, please wait until MEAWS is ready in Summer 2009.
You're not measuring rhythmic skills; you're measuring rhythms and tempo following! Short answer: yes, but I have good reasons for doing this.
Pedagogy: music students who frequently play alone may find it very difficult (and perhaps pointless!) to follow a metronome. After all, they "know" that they are perfect when they practice by themselves! Their rhythmic ability is certainly not as as bad as MEWER suggests -- so what if their tempo fluctuates a bit?
However, musicians who play with others (be it duets, orchestras, or rock bands) must be able to follow an external tempo. If you are playing violin with nine other violinists in orchestra, then it doesn't matter how beautifully you play if you do not follow the conductor! Yes, in certain situations a musician can ignore the rest of the group -- for example, a singer performing an aria can do whatever she wishes with the tempo, forcing the piano or conductor to follow whatever she does... but these situations are rare.Technology: extracting a tempo from a short rhythmic exercise is a non-trivial problem, especially if we cannot be certain that the musician performed the rhythm correctly. By providing an external tempo, we avoid this problem.
That is not to say that tempo-tracking is an uninteresting part of Music Technology; far from it! Tracking the tempo of rhythmic exercises would be a nice project for a Masters degree. However, I did not want to delay MEWER by 1-2 years in order to develop a good way of doing this.