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Peterson BB-1 Pulsing BodyBeat Metronome | 
 enlarge | Brand: Peterson
Category: Musical Instruments
List Price: $129.00
Buy New: $98.95
You Save: $30.05 (23%)
New (3) from $98.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 3484
The BodyBeat from Peterson offers a new approach on typical metronome use. The BodyBeat metronome produces a pulsing vibration allowing musicians to easily internalize the beat. The BodyBeat clips onto the belt line and a small separate 'vibe clip' transmits the beat, in the form of a pulse (including subdivisions and accents) directly to the user. Feeling the beat, not having to listen to clicks or look at blinking LEDs makes it much easier to focus on the music and playing in correct time. Imp
MPN: 403849
ASIN: B0015YROUE
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
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| Features:
| • | Feel the beat from the vibration clip | | • | Internalize the accent and subdivisions | | • | Suitable for all musicians | | • | Audible and visual modes included | | • | Power: Single 9V Battery |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The BodyBeat from Peterson offers a new approach on typical metronome use. The BodyBeat metronome produces a pulsing vibration allowing musicians to easily internalize the beat. The BodyBeat clips onto the belt line and a small separate 'vibe clip' transmits the beat, in the form of a pulse (including subdivisions and accents) directly to the user. Feeling the beat, not having to listen to clicks or look at blinking LEDs makes it much easier to focus on the music and playing in correct time. Improve your timing with the BodyBeat!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Best metronome out there May 24, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
The Peterson Body Beat is the best metronome out there. The audible click of a regular metronome is a very intellectual phenomenon. As a musician I can make a click groove, but for most beginners there's a wide open space between clicks that they just don't feel the way an experienced musician feels it. The Body Beat produces a pulse you can literally feel.
The pulse is the same sort that is used in video game controllers, beepers, cell phones, etc. It's rather strong, and when you first use it, surprisingly strong in your hand, but it needs this strength to transmit its pulse into your body.
When you first start using it, you use the same intellectual process to analyze the clicks, but within a few minutes you start to internalize the beat rather than intellectualize it. If you leave it on w/o an instrument in your hands, you'll find yourself dancing in your seat. The beat has an almost night club feel to it. If you take the clip off, the pulse sounds like being outside a dance club. The Buttkicker subwoofer, which doesn't produce an audible sound, but vibrates your chair probably produces a similar feeling on a larger scale. (note: the buttkicker is just a subwoofer & not a metronome & it isn't as portable or useful as the bodybeat)
My favorite pattern is "sixteenth plus dotted eight" set to about 90 bpm. Using this beat, you'll be creating killer grooves in no time. The "shake your booty" grooves that earn musicians a reputation the man who gets the women out on the dance floor, which is the ultimate goal of any metronome anyway. Feeling the pulse is partly about being able to subdivide the rhythm in meaningful ways.
Beginners start practicing with a metronome by playing every click on the click. This is detrimental. You should subdivide the beat more & play every *other* click, working your way up to playing every click, and then even further to having the click sound for every other note you play. Many modern metronomes offer multiple rhythmic configurations and subdivisions & the BodyBeat does too. Some have griped about it's lack of truly exotic rhythms, but I don't think that would be an issue for anyone. You can set it from 0 - 9 pulses before the long "one" and to a variety of patterns. This should be enough for anyone to internalize most useful rhythms including triplets, and extreme subdivisions (which starts to be too much, like dotted 16ths + 32nds).
I do have a few gripes, though. The aforementioned build quality. It feels like the kind of plastic that breaks after a while, though I'm not sure where since it's pretty squarely built (literally, it's a rectangle with few sticky-outy parts). The wire that attaches the device that pulses is just like a cheap headphone cable, about the quality of an ipod headphone cable, and I expect it to last just as long. I wouldn't be surprised if Peterson was forced to start offering cheap replacement pulse devices after a while. It would be great if it came with a velvet pouch to help protect it a bit from life in the gig bag where it will get crushed by tuners, drum keys, bottle openers, and the weight of the guitar itself.
It uses a long pulse for the "one" beat and a short pulse for the other beats. Interestingly, using the sixteenth-plus-dotted-eighth beat I mentioned earlier, the long beat feels more like the anticipatory sixteenth before the one, flipping the beat the other way around. The reverse happens with the dotted-eight-plus-sixteenth pattern. Not that this is a problem, but I don't think it's what the designer intended.
Lastly, I'd love it if you could simultaneously sound the click and feel the pulse. Unfortunately, it's either one or the other. I also dislike the "beep" pulse, preferring the "click" pulse since it's easier to "bury" the click in hand claps than beeps, but this is a gripe I have with many metronomes so I can hardly blame Peterson for following the trend. Being able to sound the click and feel the pulse would allow you to marry your ears & your internal rhythm faster, plus you'd be able to do "bury the click with your clap" exercises with the beat going.
These are minor gripes, though. The unique ability of this metronome to allow you to internalize the beat makes it well worth the $100 investment and my 5 star rating. If you're on the fence about it, if you think it's just a gimmick, I assure you it's good and will improve your playing if you use it regularly. Occasionally you may want to unplug the pulsing device & test yourself against the click to check your progress in a more traditional manner.
Value to musicians: 5+ stars
Build quality: 3 stars
 Great functionality, but low quality construction for the price... May 20, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have been learning the violin for about 14 months now and playing in time has been very difficult for me. I'm at the point where my issues with timing will hinder my progress serverely. So I've been struggling with a clicking Wittner metronome and I just can't hear the thing over the violin next to my ear. That and I have to focus on the clicks and it takes my mind off the music, intonation, bowing and everything falls apart. So out of frustration I bought this product and I've made more progress with playing in time in 2 hours with this device than I have with two weeks of the metronome, I kid you not what a great idea! I placed the clip on the nape of my neck and before I know it I'm playing with the slight buzzes in perfect time.
My biggest complaint about this product is for the $100 price tag I would expect higher quality construction. It's not, it feels like a cheap walkman you would get from a street vendor in NYC for $8.00. Cheap plastic, very light and just cheap feeling. It just doesn't feel like $100 worth of product. But functionally it definitely does the job, I just hope something made this cheaply can stand the test of time (I doubt it I am guessing 3 months before it breaks on me from daily use). It would've gotten five stars if not for the low quality construction. When you compare the quality of construction of this device with an equally priced all wood Wittner you can see such a drastic difference in quality no one would guess they are the same price range, the Wittner is a work of art compared to it. When you are also quadrupuling the price of almost all other elctronic metronomes the construction shouldn't feel like low grade junk.
Say goodbye to spastic time April 3, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is an entirely new metronome that delivers a strong pulse rather than an audible tone or beat. I've played guitar for 10 years and never had much of an internal since of time. After using the body beat for a couple weeks, my timing has improved tremendously. With a conventional metronome I would gradually lose the groove, and not knowing whether I was ahead or behind the beat, would stop and catch up. With the Body Beat, it's next to impossible to lose the beat because it's a tactile jolt. Also it's quiet so it doesn't interfere with the music. In music timing is everything, and this new product is the most effective training aid I have used.
We all have our own learning curves, some steeper than others and we all want to improve faster. This new innovation makes that much easier.
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