How and Why to Use a Metronome (Without Hating It)

A lot of us have seen it, heard of it, and absolutely dreaded and despised it, but the metronome is a really useful tool, and it’s one you can find free on our website right here!

Most folks only bust out the metronome for scale work, but you can use it for anything though: chords, songs, slowly building up speed, etc.

In this post, I want to talk about how to get something out of using your metronome instead of just suffering through it.

Start at 80 and learn to land on the one

We’ll start at 80 beats per minute in 4/4 time.

4/4 is one of the most common time signatures out there and it means four beats per bar. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

A good metronome puts a different click on the one to keep you focused.

As you play through your scale, begin on the one. Then come back down, and land on the one again.

That is the baseline skill and knowing where beat one is at all times is what lets you play with other people, come back in after a break, and stop a song together.

How to get faster

So let’s say you’re trying to get faster at a scale.. I tell all my students to increase the tempo by 5. And if you’re feeling really confident at that speed, go up 10.

Then keep doing that until you start topping out. Wherever you cap is the speed you should be practicing at.

Ultimately, if you’re chasing speed, this is the way to get it. It’s also a great way to keep yourself in check and make sure you’re in time.

How this works

As mentioned, you only move the tempo up when the current tempo is clean. And I’m talkin’ CLEAN. Basically, I want you to run through it three times with no buzzes or missed notes or stumbles. Clean, clean.

If you can’t do that, you don’t go up. Instead, you stay, or you go back down 5.

And the reason is because speed is not the thing you’re practicing, accuracy is. Speed is a byproduct of accuracy repeated enough times. If you practice at a tempo where you’re making mistakes, you are rehearsing the mistakes, and they get faster right along with everything else.

Most people’s ceiling is that they’ve spent months practicing sloppy at a tempo they can’t really hold.

Why this is so important

Until you have a really good internalized rhythm, a metronome is where you should be.

Even bands playing live typically have a click track in their ear. Any studio work I’ve ever done, every single track I’ve recorded, there’s always a click track.

A lot of people don’t have that internal rhythm dialed in, myself included. Sometimes I get caught up in the moment and go a little too fast.

If you ever want to do any studio work or record an album, get used to using a metronome and get good with it; your producer will thank you for it.

Unfortunately, most people avoid it because the metronome is a mirror. It tells you the truth about your timing, and the truth is usually worse than you thought. That’s uncomfortable, and it’s also why it’s valuable.

Ultimately, you can’t fix drift you can’t hear.

Subdivisions

Sometimes a metronome won’t go fast enough, or you want to feel a different pulse, so here’s what to do instead of cranking the tempo.

Bring it back down to 80, and instead of increasing it to 160, play a note on the beat and then another note in between the clicks. That’ll artificially give you 160, and it gives you a taste of the space between the beats.

In music this is what we call subdivisions, where you divide the beat into a set number of pieces. In that case we divided the beat in half.

If you want to go further, drop the metronome to 40, which is about as low as most of them go, and play four notes for every click. You’ll be back at 160, but now you’re feeling the bar instead of chasing the click.

That skill is more important than people realize. Playing fast against a fast click is easy because the click is holding your hand the whole way. But playing fast against a slow click means you’re keeping time by yourself, and that’s what most people can’t do.

Try this for a challenge

Once the subdivision thing is comfortable, give this a shot..

Set your metronome to 40 and play so the click lands on beats 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3; everything will immediately feel different.

The click starts feeling like a backbeat, which is where a snare drum sits. It also means you have to know where beat one is on your own.

It’ll fall apart the first few times, but stick with it because once you can do it, playing with a drummer becomes enormously easier.

Using it on an actual song

Most people need it on a song they’re stuck on rather than scales, so here’s how to use it for that:

First, find the specific bar that’s breaking. There’s almost always one specific transition that falls apart, and everybody’s instinct is to play the whole song again from the top and hope it works out. And if you think about it, that’s mostly practicing the parts you can already do.

Instead, isolate it. Take the two bars from either side of the problem and loop just that.

Set the click slow enough that you can play it perfectly, which is probably embarrassingly slow, but that’s what you want here.

Then, play it four times clean, then up 5 bpm. Repeat it until you’re past the tempo the song needs, then put it back in context.

Twenty minutes of that will do more for a song than a week of playing it start to finish.

A practice week with your metronome

If you want a structure, here’s what I’d recommend to you:

• Monday: one scale, roots on the one, 80 bpm, straight quarter notes
• Tuesday: same scale, same tempo, two notes per click
• Wednesday: climb. 5 bpm at a time, three clean passes each, until you cap
• Thursday: the broken bar from whatever song you’re learning
• Friday: four notes per click at 40 bpm
• Saturday: click on 2 and 4
• Sunday: play with no metronome at all, and notice what your timing does

The goal is always to build the clock inside your head, and that’s what this routine will help you do.

When you it just won’t work

Some people put a metronome on and find they simply cannot lock in. Maybe the click seems to move or they’re fine one bar and lost the next.

Here’s what might be going wrong:

You’re listening to it as a countdown instead of as a pulse

If you’re mentally chasing each click as it arrives, you’ll always be slightly behind, because reacting takes time. The fix is to stop reacting and start predicting. Listen for a few bars without playing until you can feel where the next click is going to land, then start.

You’re too fast

This is almost always the case. If this is true, cut the tempo in half and see if it locks.

Your playing itself is uneven

The click is steady, so if you’re drifting, it’s coming from you and usually from one specific spot. Find that spot, which is almost always a string change, a position shift, or a chord your hand doesn’t know yet.

One more trick that helps enormously is to count out loud while you play. One, two, three, four. Believe me, it feels silly, but it’s remarkably effective because it forces you to keep the beat somewhere other than your hands.

Where people go wrong

Only using it for scales.

Use your metronome for chord changes, strumming, the tricky bar of a song you keep fluffing, etc, etc. There are so many use cases. Don’t limit yourself.

Moving the tempo up too early.

Three clean passes or you stay put.

Fighting the click instead of sitting in it.

If you’re constantly correcting, then you’re too fast.

Turning it off the moment it gets uncomfortable.

Listen I GET IT. But the discomfort is what you need because it gives you insight into where you need to work on things.

Never practicing without it.

A metronome is not a replacement internal timing. Run a piece with it, then immediately run it without and see if you held.

Use it for everything

Any time you’re doing scales, or trying to get a particularly tricky song down, start slow and slowly build your way up.

Eventually you’ll realize you’re playing it a lot faster than you ever could without one.

Our metronome is free on the site here with tap tempo, an accented downbeat, and every time signature you’d need. Go use it tonight!