The metronome is a tool that guitar players and other musicians use primarily for these purposes:
- Set the right tempo for the song
- Practice playing on time
- When building speed – measuring the speed reached.
In this lesson, I’ll show you how to use this device step by step, as well as how to get the most out of it by only using it when necessary.
What is a metronome
A metronome is a device that can be manual, or digital.
Manual metronomes are rarely used by guitarists, though they make a beautiful sight on a grand piano.
Digital metronomes and apps are more practical, and can be found in abundance all over the internet or in music stores.
That said, they both serve the same role – providing a steady click that the practicing guitarist can keep the time with.
Why you need to practice the guitar with a metronome
The answer is simple – if you never practice with a metronome, your timing will be weak. When you improvise with other musicians you’ll spoil the whole jam, no one will ever want to play with you and you will lose all your friends.
Maybe I’m being too dramatic here, but the point is that timing is the one factor that you can’t get wrong when you’re playing with other musicians.
If you play a wrong note, no one will notice it.
If you play a few wrong notes, they may get noticed, but no one will care.
But if you play out of time, you ruin the whole jam. That’s how important it is.
That being said, this does not mean you should spend all your practice time with the click ticking. As we’ll see below there, a large chunk of your practice time should be practiced without a metronome.
How to use a metronome
If you have never practiced with a metronome, this lesson will show you how to use it from scratch but first there’s an issue we need to address: Time signatures.
At the start of every piece of music there are two numbers on top of each other. This is called the time signature.
The number at the bottom determines the value of the beat, while the number at the top determines how many beats there are in each bar.
If you want to learn more about time signatures go to this lesson. For the purposes of this lesson the time signature will always be 4/4, the most commonly used time signature in Western music.
In 4/4, the bottom number indicates that each note will have the value of a quarter note (or crotchet), and the number at the top indicates there are 4 quarter notes in each bar.
In the following example, each note is a quarter note, and thus has the value of one beat:
In the preceding example, the tempo is set to 70 bpm (beats per minute). This means that at that tempo, 70 quarter notes are played per minute.
The first step to learning how to use the metronome correctly is setting it at specific tempo, one that you feel comfortable with, and lock in with the beat playing one quarter note on every beat.
Make sure you’re playing exactly on the beat, not slightly before or after it.
The second step is to play the same exercise at different tempi.
You can play this exercise on any note on the guitar, as long as it’s not an open string, which will make it harder to execute rests, as you’ll see below.
The same process can then be replicated using chords.
Notes longer than 1 beat
If we had to play one note on every beat, the music would be boring. Thus rhythm is created in music when we combine notes that are either longer or shorter than one beat.
We’ll look at these notes and how to play them on a metronome, starting from notes longer than a beat.
The half note (minim, Ex 1) represents two beats while the whole note (semibreve, Ex. 2) represents four beats:
The following exercise combines the three rhythmic values learned so far (quarter note, half note and whole note).
Subdivisions of the beat
The quarter note (crotchet) is one beat, the half note (minim) is two, the whole (semibreve) note is four. What about notes shorter than one beat?
If we divide the beat in two we get eight notes (quavers, Ex. 1), while if we divide it in four, we get sixteenth notes (semiquavers, Ex. 2)
Rests
Each of these note values has its own equivalent in silence. In music these are called rests.
The following are the symbols of the note values we have explored, followed by their equivalent rests.
The following exercises make use of all the rhythmic elements described above.
Practice them with a metronome to get grounded in playing the most important rhythmic elements in time.
The first exercise is a bit easier than the second since it avoids note subdivisions of less than an eight note, and rest subdivisions of less than a quarter note.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
In this exercise, the divisions of the beat are emphasized over longer notes/rests.
The examples and exercises given above are meant to get you playing with a metronome and do not cover all the elements of rhythm. Other elements include ties, dots and triplets. Go to this lesson on rhythmic patterns if you want to explore more rhythmic options.
Using a metronome in real life situations
In order to focus solely on rhythm, in the examples above we’re using only one note.
In real life situations you will have different notes, and on different strings, which makes things harder.
Thus, the next step is to apply using the metronome with scales, chords, arpeggios, exercises, riffs and licks.
Pick say, the A minor pentatonic scale and play it with a metronome using one note per beat (ex. 1), two notes per beat (ex. 2) and four notes per beat (ex. 3).
Adjust the tempo accordingly by setting a lower speed when you have more subdivisions.
When to use a metronome
Never using a metronome when practicing the guitar will lead to a weak sense of rhythm but this doesn’t mean that you should practice with a metronome all the time.
The metronome is a tool and should only be used when necessary.
While you’re early in the process of learning something, you should not use a metronome since your attention should be on finding the notes, and playing them correctly.
If you use a metronome at this point, the process will be much harder, and you will develop bad habits due to the fact that you didn’t focus on the right positions or fingerings.
Introduce the metronome only when you’re pretty familiar with the music that you’re playing so that now that you have developed enough muscle memory to play the notes correctly, you can focus on playing them on time.
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