Free online metronome with drum beats
Press Play for a steady click, or choose from more than 170 drum grooves and practise with a real beat. Set any tempo from 30 to 400 BPM, pick a time signature and subdivision, and copy the exact setup as a link. Everything on this page works in your browser without an account.
How to use the online metronome
Type a tempo, nudge it with the minus and plus buttons, or use Tap tempo and tap along with a recording. Press Play or the space bar to start and stop. Choose 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8 or 12/8 from the time signature menu, or set any meter from 1 to 32 beats over a whole, half, quarter, eighth or sixteenth note. Tap a beat in the pattern to cycle it through accent, normal, soft and silent.
Keyboard shortcuts
Space starts and stops the metronome. The up and down arrows change the tempo by 1 BPM, or by 5 BPM with Shift held. The left and right arrows change it by 10 BPM. M turns gap bars on or off, L locks the controls so a stray key cannot change your setup, and R resets the metronome to 120 BPM in 4/4. Shortcuts pause while you are typing in a field.
A metronome with drum beats
A plain click tells you where the beat is; a groove tells you how the music feels. The beat library has more than 170 drum grooves across rock, funk, jazz, Latin, pop, soul, hip-hop, reggae and electronic styles, including Basic Rock, the Purdie Shuffle, the Rosanna Shuffle, Bossa Nova, Jazz Swing, Reggae One Drop, Boom Bap, Four-on-the-Floor and a 7/8 rock beat grouped 3+2+2. Each groove opens at a suggested tempo that you can change. Every groove also has its own page with the count and a hit-by-hit grid, and the drum beats pages play them as a backing drummer for guitar, bass and vocals.
Subdivisions and swing
Subdivisions make the space between beats audible. Choose eighth notes, triplets, sixteenth notes, or five, six or seven notes per beat. Swing lengthens the first note of each pair from 50% (straight) to 75% (a hard 3:1 shuffle); the presets are Straight, Light groove, Jazz swing at 2:1 and Hard shuffle. On a plain click, swing applies to eighth and sixteenth subdivisions. On a groove, it applies to the notes the groove marks as swung.
Odd time signatures and beat groupings
Type an additive grouping such as 3+2+2 and the metronome sets 7/8 with an accent at the start of each group. You can also choose which note one BPM beat counts: the time signature’s note, a quarter note or a dotted quarter. Counting 6/8 in dotted quarters gives you two strong beats per bar, the way the music is usually felt.
Tempo markings and BPM
Italian tempo markings describe character as well as speed, so treat these ranges as a starting point rather than a rule. Editions, conductors and metronome manufacturers print slightly different numbers.
| Marking | Meaning | Approximate BPM |
|---|---|---|
| Largo | Broad, very slow | 40–60 |
| Adagio | Slow, at ease | 66–76 |
| Andante | At a walking pace | 76–108 |
| Moderato | Moderate | 108–120 |
| Allegro | Fast and bright | 120–156 |
| Vivace | Lively | 156–176 |
| Presto | Very fast | 168–200 |
| Prestissimo | As fast as possible | Above 200 |
How long is one beat?
One beat lasts 60,000 divided by the BPM, in milliseconds. At 60 BPM each beat is exactly one second; at 120 BPM it is half a second. Eighth notes halve these durations and sixteenth notes halve them again.
| Tempo | One beat | One eighth note |
|---|---|---|
| 60 BPM | 1,000 ms | 500 ms |
| 80 BPM | 750 ms | 375 ms |
| 90 BPM | 667 ms | 333 ms |
| 100 BPM | 600 ms | 300 ms |
| 120 BPM | 500 ms | 250 ms |
| 140 BPM | 429 ms | 214 ms |
| 160 BPM | 375 ms | 188 ms |
Start with a useful tempo
Choose a speed at which you can play the whole passage without stopping, and count a bar before you come in. When one change breaks the pulse, loop that change rather than slowing the entire piece. A steady reference helps you notice timing. To measure it, press Check my time: tap or play along with the mic for eight bars, keep going through four silent ones, and it tells you whether you rushed, dragged or held the tempo.
Build speed without guessing
Build speed raises the tempo by a fixed step every few bars, starting from 5 BPM every four bars, up to a target you set. Raise the tempo only while the passage stays controlled, and drop back when it does not. Drop the click alternates bars with the click and silent bars, from one to eight of each. Tap, play into the mic or hit a MIDI pad through the silence, and each time the click comes back it shows how early or late you landed.
Take it to rehearsal or a gig
Stage view fills the screen with the tempo and a big light on every beat, so you can read it from across a rehearsal room, and the screen stays awake while it plays. Add each song to a setlist with its name, tempo, groove and meter, then send the whole set to the band as one link. Once the page has loaded, the metronome and the grooves you have played keep working without a signal.
Is this metronome free?
Yes. The metronome, tap tempo, drum grooves, subdivisions, swing, speed trainer and gap bars all work in the browser without signing up. While the metronome is stopped, the address bar keeps your tempo, meter, subdivision, groove and swing, so copying the link shares the exact setup with a student, teacher or bandmate.