Metronome for music practice

Practising with the metronome

How to use it, the habits I teach, key terms and common questions.

Who it helps

In my lessons, most timing problems come back to one thing: the pulse drifts and the student does not notice. A metronome makes that drift easy to hear. It helps:

• Beginners who rush the easy bars and slow down in the hard ones.
• Students preparing a piece for a lesson, a concert or an exam.
• Teachers who want every student to practise at a set tempo between lessons.
• Bilingual classrooms, because every screen works in English and Arabic.

How to use it

Choose a tempo and a time signature, then start the click and practise along with it. Begin slowly, and only raise the tempo when the passage feels easy.

1. Set the tempo with the slider or the plus and minus buttons. The screen shows the BPM and its Italian tempo name, such as Andante or Allegro.
2. Pick the time signature, and use accents to mark the strong beats of the bar.
3. Add swing if the style needs it, and choose the click sound you hear best over your instrument.
4. Hold the settings button for a light or dark theme, sound or flash output, a count-in, and your default tempo and click sound.

Practice tips from a teacher

Musicians have long practised with a metronome to keep a steady tempo (opens in a new tab), the speed of the music. These are the habits I teach with it:

• Start slower than you think. If you cannot get a passage right three times in a row, the tempo is too high.
• Listen for the click disappearing. When you are exactly together with it, the click almost vanishes under your note.
• Count out loud for the first few bars, especially after a rest.
• Keep sessions short and focused. Ten good minutes beat an hour of drifting.
• Turn the click off for the last run-through and check that the tempo holds on its own.

A simple daily routine

A 20-minute metronome practice routine

1. Warm-up3 minutes

   Long notes or open strings with the click at a slow, comfortable tempo

2. Technique5 minutes

   Scales or exercises, two notes per click, then four

3. Piece, slowly7 minutes

   The hardest bars of your piece at a tempo you can perform cleanly

4. Piece, faster3 minutes

   Raise the tempo a little and repeat the whole section

5. Without the click2 minutes

   One run-through on your own to check the pulse holds

Key terms

Metronome

A device or app that sounds a steady click at a tempo you choose, so you can keep an even pulse.

BPM

Beats per minute. At 60 BPM there is one beat every second; at 120 BPM there are two.

Tempo

The speed of the music, given in BPM or with an Italian word such as Andante (at a walking pace) or Allegro (cheerful and fairly fast).

Subdivision

Splitting each beat into smaller equal parts, such as two quavers or four semiquavers, to keep faster notes even.

Questions

Related guide: How to practise with a metronome