How to use the metronome?

Hi All,

I am a beginner and I've no idea about how to use the metronome when practicing the songs. I've used it only to practice chord changes so far and I think it helps a lot. I want to use it to practice the songs as well. I've searched on the web for some instructions but I could not find a good one.

I am using the metronome on the Tools section on Guitar Tricks. Currently I am trying to play the song "Darling Destination" which is taught by Lisa McCormick. I assume that "Allegro" should be 140 and "Beats per measure" 2 on metronom for this song since the tempo of the song is 140 and Lisa strums 2 times for each chord. I tried to use with this numbers but it did not match exactly with the song.

I would appreciate if anyone can help me to figure out how to use it.

Thanks!

Hi and welcome

This song is at a fairly quick pace but is really quite simple once you get the hang of playing the bass note and then finishing the chord in time. Rather than get into complications with a metronome, setting a constant tempo of 140 and striking the appropriate string(s) in time will be simpler.

Most of the time I use the metronome on Google - its just a solid time, no accents etc.

Good luck.

For the longest time I used the first version of the GT metronome, preferring it to the update (to be fair, I haven't looked at GT's current metronome in a couple years). Recently though, I've been using one from Session Town found here; https://www.sessiontown.com/en/music-games-apps/free-online-metronome-app All online metronomes have their pluses and minuses, IMO, with those based on Flash noted for having accuracy problems. But I like this one; it covers the basics such as setting the BPM and the timing of the accent. The accent can be turned off too which is a useful feature when learning new 'stuff.'

The downer is the lack of an automatic BPM increase, called "Speed Drill" by the old GT metronome. That's a great feature of the GT ticker but the Session Town metronome must be individually set for each speed change and then, once started and run through each of the increases the cycle ends... there's no repeat and no BPM increase beyond whatever speeds were each manually and individually set.

FYI, many (most?) instructors suggest very slow/small increases of BPM when trying to increase your playing speed, i.e., increase the BPM by tiny steps, don't jump it up like the major increases found in the "slow motion" function of the GT lesson videos.

Good luck, have fun.

First of all, why do you set the beats per mesure at 2? there are 4 beats per mesure in that song because it is in 4/4 time, not in 2/4 time. She strums the chords 2 times but she also plays the bass note 2 times per mesure and that counts also as a beat.

Second ; it is always a good idea to listen to the songs and count the beats per minute so you will notice that even the instructors in GT don't always play at the speed the tabs are saying, this song for instance is not at 140 beats but somewhere around 132 beats so making it a lot easier to play along with.

Hope this clarifies stuff, Herman

Been looking quickly through Lisa's lessons and don't find anything explaining time signatures so I will do it here.

The time signature is at the beginning of the staff ( for solfege ) or tab and is a combination of 2 numbers with a slash in between them.The number behind the slash tells you the note value which is used for the count 4 is for quarter notes, 2 is for half notes and 8 is for eight notes etc. The number before the slash tells you how many of those notes are in one beat like 2/4 means that there are 2 quarter notes in one mesure, 4/4 means that there are 4 quarter notes in one mesure, 9/8 means that there are 9 eight notes in one mesure.

As for the tempo, it is usually set to beats per quarter note but is not always the case that's why you always look to the tempo and see which note is specified with the beat.

Hope this helps even more 'cause it looked to me that you didn't know about this.

Hi All,

Thanks very much for these useful information. Appreciate for it.

Cheers.