Tool

The Metronome

Every page on Drum Town carries a metronome — the tempo pill in the header opens it. Tap the pill and the controls appear across the bottom of the screen. Set a tempo, pick a time signature, and press play. This page is about using it well.

Tap the tempo pill in the header to open the metronome along the bottom of the screen. Type a tempo (or drag the slider), choose beats per bar — 2/4 through 7/8 — and press play. The first beat of each bar is accented so you always know where "1" is.

  • Learning something new: slower than feels necessary — ♩ = 50–70. If it feels boring, it's right. (See Slow Practice.)
  • Cleaning something up: 10 BPM below the tempo where it falls apart, then move up in small steps.
  • Building speed: raise the tempo ~10% only after a passage is 100% clean for two unbroken minutes.

A click doesn't have to mark every beat. Three ways to make it harder and more useful, from Practicing with a Metronome:

  • Click on 2 and 4 — halve the tempo and hear the click as the backbeat. The click becomes a bandmate instead of a ruler.
  • Click once per bar — you hold the time for three beats alone and the click grades you on beat 1.
  • Subdivision check — play 8ths or 16ths against a quarter click and listen for the notes between clicks drifting.

The metronome follows you to every lesson on the site. The sound does not: a browser only lets audio start from a tap on the page you are looking at, so opening a new lesson pauses the click. The dock comes back open with your tempo and meter still set and the play button waiting — one press and it is running again.