You know me - or maybe you don’t, that is the nature of a blog - but anyone who does would know I’m fond of free stuff, love music and quite like gadgets. So,
http://software.aziraphal.com/Metronome.php is a site that make me very happy. A free metronome for any Java phone. A metronome is really useful tool for practising and should be to hand for professional musicians / serious students.

I have an old wind up proper soothing tick-tock job but modern ones run can be set for different tones on different beats and anyway my phone is more likely to be to hand than the metronome is - and weirdly enough the phone is smaller and easier to carry.

If you do any music and have a Java phone you should go get a copy. The guy who wrote it seems a nice chap too - he did say it should work everywhere (in theory) but unfortunately in most cases it’s not very reliable (especially on newer phones where J2ME is almost obsolete and not implemented very well) but I have had no problems just playing system sounds or beeps - midi and wav’s did cause a crash that meant a battery removal reset but I just avoid them now.

The author did give me some more feedback:
It works decent enough on older Nokia’s (most people who let me use their phones for testing had Nokias) that have built-in J2ME MIDP2 java support (as opposed to a client inside Symbian or some other “modern” OS) and was actually usable at slower BPM’s. Judging by some online reviews it was most disappointing to Blackberry owners.

Finally, although it is free it is described as albumware - if you like the tool the author asks you to listen to (and I guess potentially buy) some of his music. A whole new marketing ploy to me and although I probably won’t buy any as it’s not my cup of tea I enjoyed a listen!