JohnB
Regarding your metronome - I trust you don't live on a very steep hill? Only kidding, but I live amidst an inordinate amount of clutter and often have great difficulty finding a truly level surface. It's one of the advantages that an electronic one has, but I still prefer my old wind-up one. A good tip for wind-ups is to not watch them, because the eye follows the sweep of the arm from end to end, and the click is in the middle of the sweep. The rhythm perceived by the eye is out of phase with that received via the ears.