Tools

Tap Tempo Metronome

BPM: Beat:

Timer:

Off Beat Pitch: Accent Pitch:

Tap or manually adjust the BPM with this free online metronome!

The above online metronome has many great features.

Apart from the obvious tap function or manually setting your desired BPM, you can also add accents and change how many beats you want in a bar.

It’s even possible to change the pitches of the beats and set a timer that counts down so you know when to rest as you practice.

The application is best viewed in Google Chrome.

How to best use a metronome when practising a song

When playing a song, the best path to playing it well is to start slowly and practice to a metronome.

For example, when learning how to play Blackbird, in the course, I talk about how we start at 74 BPM and practice the song in small loops.

In total, the song can easily be divided up into seven loops. Once I can play all sections at this tempo, I increase to 84 BPM, still using the same seven loops.

The goal is to get to 92 BPM as this is the tempo of the actual song.

To achieve this, it may seem like a good idea to just make small increments of 2 BPM until we get there but that’s not actually the best way.

Instead, keep going much, much further. In step 6 of the course, I show you this as I go all the way to 124 BPM.

That’s 32 BPM faster than the goal!

To then go back to 92 BPM means that it feels really slow and we can play it with a much better feel, compared with if we just built up to 92 BPM and stopped.

So the best way to learn a song is to practice to a metronome at a much faster speed than the actual goal is.

Get yourself organized by keeping track of your BPM

Another benefit of using a metronome is that you’ll automatically get yourself organized.

For example, if you practice chromatic exercises every day as a warm-up, by having a diary where you write down which exercises you worked on, as well as what BPM you reached, you have structured your practice routine better.

It doesn’t have to be more complicated than using a simple spreadsheet like this.

Day	Exercise #	BPM start	BPM reached	Time spent
Monday	Chromatic #11	90	112	8 min
Tuesday	Chromatic #12	92	114	8 min
Wednesday	Chromatic #13	90	110	10 min
Thursday	Chromatic #11	94	116	8 min
Friday	Chromatic #12	94	116	10 min
Saturday	Chromatic #13	96	120	10 min
Sunday	Chromatic #11	96	120	12 min

You’ll be surprised how much better you get at keeping to this schedule when you have something to look back at and can actually see your own progress.

Spytunes free metronome features

Set accents to practice 16th-note patterns

The metronome you find at the top of this page really does have it all.

You can tap the tempo, or just write the exact BPM you want. Usually, these are two different applications.

You can change the number of beats, meaning you can be in 4/4, 3/5, 5/8, or whatever crazy time signature you can imagine.

You can include accents, so if you have a bar of 4/4 with a complicated 16th note pattern, set the beat to 32, add whatever the rhythm is as accents and you can just follow it.

This is a great alternative to practising 16th note rhythmical exercises as you can easily just change it.

Finally, set the timer to however long you want to practice.

Remember to take breaks or you may develop RSI, which you definitely don’t want. If it hurts, you must stop!