Who’s Got the Time: Soundbrenner’s Florian Simmendinger on Practicing With a Vibrating Metronome (Episode 43)

Reliability beats virtuosity.

After the NAMM 2020 craze, the world went into social distancing, and Nomad had some good news: you can stay home and practice. What better way to practice than with a metronome?

At NAMM he linked up with Florian Simmendinger, the founder and CEO of Soundbrenner, the company behind wearable metronomes that vibrate so you feel the pulse instead of hearing a click. Nomad owns and uses one himself. In this short Episode 43, Florian explains how the idea started, how to get used to practicing with a vibrating metronome, and the one principle he thinks decides success.

A tap on the shoulder

Florian started Soundbrenner in Berlin in 2014, straight out of university. He studied business marketing, his co-founder studied music technology, and both of them cared about design and music. Florian plays piano. His co-founder is a drummer who was more active in bands.

The spark came from a classical musician they met in the Berlin startup scene, who had the idea of syncing musicians with vibration. Florian immediately thought back to his own music teacher, who used to give him the beat by tapping him on the shoulder. If it worked for a teacher, why not for practicing alone?

Building consumer electronics turned out to be hard in Germany, mostly because the components, manufacturing and know-how are concentrated in South China. So Florian moved the company to Hong Kong to give it a real chance. As he tells it, they had no resources and no idea what they were doing, and they shipped a product anyway.

Give something away first

The first wearable has no screen, so it needed a companion app for building set lists and tempos. Then they asked why lock the app behind the hardware. They made it free for everybody, and it became a calling card. Florian says around 200,000 musicians a month download it, and some of them end up buying the hardware once they are tired of the click.

That is a lesson for players too. Something useful, given away, can be the thing that introduces people to what you do.

How to get used to feeling the click

Nomad admitted there is a transition the first time you use it. Florian compares it to the first time you ever played to a click track: you probably couldn't stay on it.

"Once you actually learn how to play with a vibrating metronome, then you can enjoy it forever for the rest of your life without an annoying click sound."

Florian Simmendinger, 8:28

His tips: try different positions, because wrist, arm, chest and leg feel very different. Experiment with longer, stronger vibrations versus shorter, weaker ones. Drummers usually find the wrist too weak and prefer the chest or upper leg, while for piano and guitar anything goes. Florian likes the chest. Then just give it a couple of hours of playing. It doesn't take ten years.

Time is the thing every bandleader notices first. Players who lock in get called back, which is why Reliability beats virtuosity.

Take away what gets between you and practice

The newer model has a display, so you can wear it as a watch every day. Florian says the company's goal is to remove the things that get between you and practicing. If it is already on your wrist, every time you check the time you think about playing.

The face twists off and attaches magnetically to a guitar, bass or ukulele as a contact tuner. It also has a decibel meter that checks how loud it is every five seconds and alerts you when the level gets dangerous for your ears. Nomad pointed out the other use: plenty of venues make you stay under a certain volume, and now you can check it in seconds.

Relentless determination

Asked for advice, Florian went straight to the entrepreneur side. An upcoming pro musician is on their own with no schedule and a billion things they could be doing, with highs and lows the whole way.

"The biggest thing is you just have to keep going and be relentlessly determined."

Florian Simmendinger, 13:05

That is Make Music Your Business in one sentence. You are the founder of your own career.

The takeaway

Use the downtime. Tighten your time, protect your ears, and keep going when it gets hard. When the gigs come back, you want to walk in more reliable than you left, because Luck = preparation + opportunity. If you are getting ready for that next call, start with the free Get the Gig guide.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

Watch on YouTube or find every episode on the TCM Podcast page.