How to practise with a metronome
A metronome only helps if you use it on purpose. These ten exercises take you from finding a tempo you can play cleanly to keeping time with no click at all, with notes for guitar, bass, keys, drums and voice. Every exercise works with the free metronome on this page.
1. Start at a tempo you can play perfectly
Pick a short passage, two to four bars, and set the metronome slow enough that you can play it without a single mistake, hesitation or tense muscle. For a new piece that is usually 50 to 70 percent of the final tempo: a song at 120 BPM starts somewhere around 60 to 84 BPM. If you make a mistake, the tempo is too fast, not you too slow. Slow practice is where the notes, the fingering and the timing all get learned at once.
2. Listen for a full bar before you play
Press Play and do nothing for four clicks. Count them out loud, nod or tap your foot, then come in on beat one. Musicians who start playing on the first click spend the first bar chasing it. The same habit works in a band: hear the count-in, feel the tempo, then play.
3. Climb a tempo ladder
Play the passage three times in a row cleanly, then raise the tempo by 4 BPM. If you fumble twice at a tempo, drop back 8 BPM, play it cleanly three more times and climb again. Stop the day’s session when you reach a tempo where the passage stops feeling easy; tomorrow you will usually start a little higher than today’s first rung.
| Step | Tempo | Move on when |
|---|---|---|
| Learn | 72 BPM (60%) | Three clean passes with no pauses |
| Build | 76 to 96 BPM in steps of 4 | Three clean passes at each step |
| Consolidate | 100 to 108 BPM | It feels relaxed, not just correct |
| Stretch | 112 to 124 BPM | Clean at 124, so 120 feels comfortable |
4. Let the metronome raise the tempo for you
Stopping to change the tempo breaks your concentration. In Fine tune, the speed trainer can add a few BPM every few bars up to a ceiling you choose, so you play a long, continuous exercise that slowly gets faster. Set the ceiling a little above your target so the target stops being the hardest tempo you have played.
5. Put the click on 2 and 4
Halve the tempo, so 120 becomes 60, and hear each click as beats 2 and 4 of the bar instead of every beat. The backbeat is where a drummer’s snare falls in rock, pop, funk, soul and jazz, and it is where the groove lives. You now have to place beats 1 and 3 yourself, which is the first step from following a click to holding time.
6. One click per bar
Set the metronome to one click per bar: halve or quarter the tempo, or tap the beat lights to mute every beat but the first. Now three beats in every four are yours. When you can land on the click every bar, try one click every two bars. Long gaps show whether you rush in the space between clicks, which most players do.
7. Let the click drop out
Turn on silent bars so the metronome plays for a few bars and then goes quiet for a few. Keep playing through the silence and listen to where your playing lands when the click comes back. If you are ahead, you rushed; if you are behind, you dragged. Our lesson on keeping time when the click disappears lets you test this in a minute.
8. Subdivide when the tempo is slow
Very slow tempos are hard because the gaps are long, and it is easy to drift inside them. Add eighth notes, triplets or sixteenths so the metronome fills the space, then take the subdivision away once the pulse feels steady. At 50 BPM a beat lasts 1.2 seconds; with sixteenths you hear a note every 300 ms.
9. Move the click off the beat
Hear the click as the “and” between beats instead of on them. Start the metronome, count “and 1 and 2” so that the click lands on each “and”, then play your part with the click still on the offbeat. It feels upside down at first. When it stops feeling strange, your time no longer depends on where the click happens to be.
10. Swap the click for a drummer
A click tells you where the beat is. A drum groove also tells you how the music feels: where the backbeat lands, whether the eighths swing and when a phrase ends. Once a part is solid with a click, play it with a drum beat in the right style at the same tempo. Players who only ever practise with a click often find a real drummer harder to follow, not easier.
Guitar and bass
Use exercises 1 and 3 for scales, riffs and chord changes, and exercise 5 for strumming and grooves. For chord changes, count how many clean changes you make in a minute at a set tempo and write the number down. Bass players should spend time with exercise 9: sitting slightly behind or on top of the beat is a choice only once you can land exactly on it.
Piano and keys
Practise hands separately with the click before hands together. For passages with uneven rhythms, subdivide (exercise 8) so every note has a click to line up with, then remove it. Keep the click quiet enough that you can hear your own evenness; if you cannot hear the click at all, you are probably playing too hard.
Drums
Rudiments on a practice pad are the classic ladder exercise: singles, doubles and paradiddles with three clean passes per rung. For grooves, exercise 6 with one click per bar shows whether your fills rush, and exercise 7 is the closest thing to a real gig where the band has no click. Use a loud, cutting click sound so it is still audible over the kit.
Singers, strings and wind
Sustained notes are where time goes missing. Use eighth-note subdivisions so you can feel each held note end exactly where it should, and practise breathing in time: take the breath on a beat, not whenever you run out. For bowed strings, practise bow changes on the click.
Common mistakes
Practising too fast and repeating mistakes, which trains the mistakes. Raising the tempo before the passage feels easy. Letting the click do the counting, so the time falls apart when it stops. Playing with the click so loud that you cannot hear yourself. Only ever practising with a click, never with a groove or a recording. And practising for an hour once a week instead of ten minutes most days.
How much metronome practice is enough?
Ten to fifteen focused minutes a day does more than a long session once a week, because timing is a habit your hands and ears build between sessions. Use the metronome for the part of your practice that needs it, usually new material and anything you are speeding up, and play the rest of the time with recordings, drum beats or other musicians.