How to Practise Guitar With a Metronome
A metronome is the most honest practice partner you can have. It shows exactly where your timing drifts and gives you a clear way to measure progress. Ten minutes a day with a metronome improves your playing more than an hour of playing without one.
BPM and time signatures
BPM means beats per minute. 60 BPM is one beat per second; most pop songs are between 80 and 130 BPM. The time signature tells how many beats are in a bar: 4/4 (four beats) is the most common, 3/4 (three beats) is used in waltzes and some ballads, and 6/8 has a rolling feel counted in two groups of three.
Finding your starting tempo
Start at a tempo where you can play the exercise perfectly three times in a row – usually 50–70 BPM. Only when it feels easy, increase by 4 or 5 BPM. If you start making mistakes, go back to the last tempo that was clean. Speed is a result of accuracy, not the other way around.
Five exercises
- Quarter-note strums: one downstroke per click on a single chord. Your strum should land exactly on the click.
- One-minute changes: change between two chords on beat 1 of every bar. Count how many clean changes you make.
- Eighth notes: strum down-up, two strums per click. Keep the strums even.
- Strumming patterns: play the folk pattern D – D U – U D U at 70 BPM, then raise the tempo slowly.
- Whole song: play a song from start to finish at 80% of its original tempo without stopping, even after mistakes.
Tips
- Tap tempo: tap along with a recording to find its BPM.
- Use the accent on beat 1 to always know where the bar starts.
- Write down your clean tempo for each exercise; seeing it go up is very motivating.
- Once you're comfortable, set the metronome to half the tempo and treat the clicks as beats 2 and 4, like a drummer's snare.