How to use the metronome
- Set the tempo. Type a number, drag the slider, use − and +, or press Tap tempo a few times in time with the music (T on a keyboard). Anything from 20 to 300 BPM.
- Pick the time signature. 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/8 and 12/8 are one tap away; Custom sets any bar from 1 to 16 beats of halves, quarters, eighths or sixteenths.
- Press Start (or Space). The circles under the tempo light up on each beat: an orange ring is the accent, a green ring a medium accent, a dashed ring a beat left silent. Tap a circle to change it.
- Add subdivisions under Clicks per beat to hear eighth notes, triplets, sixteenths or a swing feel between the beats, softer than the beat itself.
- Practise with it. The speed trainer raises the tempo for you, the gap trainer mutes some bars, and the practice timer counts how long you have played and can stop the metronome after a set time.
Accents, groups and odd meters
Beat 1 is accented by default, so you always know where the bar starts. In meters that are counted in groups, the start of each group gets a medium accent: 6/8 is felt as two groups of three (1 2 3 4 5 6), 5/4 is usually 3+2 or 2+3, and 7/8 is most often 2+2+3. The Accents menu lists every way to split the bar into twos and threes; pick the one your piece uses, or tap the circles to make your own pattern. Setting a beat to silent is handy for practising off-beats: silence beats 1 and 3 of a 4/4 bar and the click only marks the backbeat on 2 and 4, as a drummer’s hi-hat would.
In 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 the Dotted quarters switch clicks once per group instead of on every eighth note, with the eighths played softly in between. The tempo converts when you switch (60 dotted quarters a minute is 180 eighths), so the music keeps the same speed.
Practice tools
- Speed trainer: add a few BPM every few bars up to a goal tempo. A common way to learn a fast passage is to start where it is clean, add 2–5 BPM every 4 or 8 bars, and stop the moment it gets sloppy; next time, start from there.
- Gap trainer (silent bars): for example 2 bars with the click, 2 without. The lights keep counting through the silence, and when the click comes back you hear straight away whether you rushed or dragged.
- Practice timer: the length of this run, your total for this visit and the slowest and fastest tempo you played. Set Stop after for a fixed practice slot; Share result makes a link with your practice time, tempo range and setup, so a teacher or bandmate opens the same settings.
- Mute: the circles keep flashing in time with no sound, for silent practice or a beat to follow on stage.
Sounds
Woodblock and Mechanical are recordings of real woodblocks (a higher block for the accent) and of a clockwork Wittner pendulum metronome, with a recorded metronome bell added on the accent, released into the public domain on Freesound. Click and Beep are electronic sounds made in your browser. A short, sharp sound is easiest to line up with; a beep cuts through a loud instrument. Every sound is loaded from this site only, and nothing you play is recorded or sent anywhere.
Tips and troubleshooting
- The click feels late: Bluetooth headphones and speakers delay all sound by 100–300 ms. The beat stays steady, but playing along feels behind; use wired headphones or the device’s own speaker.
- No sound: check the tab isn’t muted, and on an iPhone or iPad turn off Silent mode. Browsers start audio only after a tap or key press, so press Start again if nothing plays.
- In another tab: the metronome keeps playing in the background; the clicks are queued further ahead there, so a tempo change takes up to a second and a half to be heard.
- Finding a song’s tempo: tap along with Tap tempo, or let the BPM finder analyse the recording. To practise with a groove instead of a click, program one in the drum machine; to check a note’s pitch while you play, use the tone generator as a reference, or play along on the virtual piano.