I always thought the use of the metronome was as someone stated earlier: to get familiar with a piece of music or to work through some difficult phrasing of a piece of music. I use mine when I want to (correctly) increase the tempo of a piece of music, or when I want to really slow it down so I can focus on pick movement. After several minutes of playing along with the metronome I turn it off (I have an electronic model) and see if I can maintain the same tempo with my foot beating the time or some other way of keeping tempo. I have also discovered that when I am playing a song it is the lyrics that very often set my tempo - but then that is probably more a reflection of the type of songs I play.

The great value of electronic metronomes is you can add doublet and triplet beats in-between the major beats of the piece, which has been a tremendous help in working through some bluegrass stuff. I have an old wind-up model that has a great deal of emotional value, but as the spring winds down the beat gets slower. WHOA! What do you know? The wind-up metronome is just like the ol' Freightdawg himself - getting slower by the minute!

That having been said, I must agree that just because you can play along with a metronome does not mean you are ready to play with a band. It means you can play along with a metronome.

Freightdawg