Why Should You Practice With a Metronome?

As a guitarist trying to establish your sense of rhythm, playing with a metronome is extremely important. By practicing with a metronome you can gain a true sense of your rhythmic and timing weakness and identify areas of improvement.

Playing with backing tracks and drummers is another way to enhance your timing, but often the other elements of the music can hide your mistakes. Personally, I’ve noticed an incredible improvement in my own timing, as well as my students’ timing, by spending as little as 15 minutes a day with a metronome. I often practice with a metronome before performing as it syncs my brain to feel perfect timing.

Now that you know the reasons for playing with a metronome, it’s important to understand how to use a metronome properly. Today, there are many smartphone metronome apps you can download. I personally like the paid version of Pro Metronome because of it every advanced feature you would ever need as well as multiple tones for the accent beat.

When picking a metronome it’s important to get one with multiple tones for the accent beat as your brain & ears can go deaf to some tones more easily than others. Pro Metronome has a cash register sound that I really like because it’s present and your ear tends to not go deaf to it.

Regarding rhythm, it’s very important to feel straight 1/8 notes, swung 1/8 notes and triplets. So I recommend practicing riffs & exercises that incorporate these straight beats for practice warm-up. I recommend a tempo of 100 BPM when starting. BPM = Beats Per Minute. This is the unit of measure for tempo or the speed of the music. Essentially, if you counted 100 even pulsed within 1 minute, you’d have 100 BPM.

When improvising, it’s important to understand the rhythmic groove of the song and feel the straight 1/8 note, triplet or whatever rhythm it’s emphasizing. Each beat is the potential trigger point of a note that could be potentially held for longer than the 1/8 note. When you can sync yourself to straight and steady pules it makes playing in-time much easier.

Once you warm up with straight pulses, try playing through an entire tune in-time with the metronome. When we discuss the pentatonic scale in a later article, we’ll also discuss the importance of odd groups of 1/8 notes, such as 3, 5, 7 or 9 even beat phrases that ascend or descend the scale to get the most out of it and add a sense of angular odd-beat rhythm. You can implement these in 4/4 timing by treating the last beat as a tied note. With a metronome, just set it to 3/8, 5/8, 7/8 or 9/8 time signature to practice odd 1/8 note group riffs and phrases. 6/8, 10/8, 14/8 and 18/8 would also work even though they are even numbers because you could treat it like two groups of 3,5,7 or 9 note phrases in a row. Once your comfortable feeling straight triplet and 1/8 note rhythms, simply know that 1/16 notes and 1/16 note triplets are just a perfect double of that speed.

When syncing yourself with the metronome, turn the phone around so you don’t see the light indicators. You need to hear and count the even beats not using visual cues, plus the lights on a phone often induce latency making it impossible to sync yourself in-time visually. You need to know & feel that 1/8 notes are even 2 beats per quarter note and count them like this… For example, If you were in 6/4 at 100BPM, you’d count (“1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 2, 5, 2, 6, 2”) for example. You also need to know that triplets are even 3 beats per quarter note. For example, If you were in 4/4 at 100BPM, you’d count (“1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3”)

At Boston Guitarist we practice our scales in multiple ways using metronomes that emphasize specific intervals. Doing so kills a few birds with 1 stone because we begin to intimately understand our fundamental intervals and scale shapes while playing extended ascending and descending phrases on-time.

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What is a Time Signature?

For the last few blog articles, we’ve discussed our fundamental chords & scales and where they come from. Now, it’s time to discuss Rhythm.

When concerning rhythm, the first thing to know is how a musical time signature functions.

A Time Signature determines two things: 1) How many steady pulses there are per measure; and 2) what common time value is deemed a “pulse”.

4/4 = Common Time = The Standard Time Signature of Western Music Theory

Measure = a consistent time interval consisting of X number of steady pulses representing a Common Time Value.

In sheet music, measures are indicated by single bar lines.

Let’s break this 4/4 time signature into two parts… We’ll call the top number the numerator and the bottom number the denominator.

Numerator = How many steady pulses are in one measure.

This number can be anything - such as 2, 4, 6, 12, etc…

For example, if you had 6/4, you would count steady pulses like: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…” Every time you say “1”, you have started a new Measure.

If you had 8/4, you would count steady pulses like: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…”

Denominator = What Common Time Value (derived from 4/4 time) is deemed a beat.

This is a bit more complex to understand than the numerator and there are only a few values this could possibly be.

The Common Time Values are derived from 4/4 as followed…

Imagine, if you had 4 steady pulses/measure…

Whole Notes:

One note triggered on pulse 1 and held through the additional 3 beats would represent 100% of all 4 steady pulses. A note representing 100% of all 4 pulses in Western Music Theory is called a Whole Note.

This note looks like an open circle, and if you had 4 whole notes per measure the time signature would look as follows: 4/1. The “1” in the denominator represents the Common Time Value of a Whole Note.

Denominator Number = 1 = 1/1 = Whole Note

Time Signature = 4/1 = 4 whole notes per measure.

In 4/1 time, one measure would count 1(234) 2(234) 3(234) 4(234). Each whole note begins on beats 1, 2, 3 and 4, outside of the (). The notes within the () represent the length of time each whole note is held for.

Half Notes:

Two notes triggered on pulse 1 & 3 and held through 1 additional beat would each represent 50% of all 4 steady pulses. A note representing 50% of all 4 pulses in Western Music Theory is called a Half Note.

This note looks like an open circle with a stem point up on the right-side, and if you had 4 half notes per measure the time signature would look as follows: 4/2. The “2” in the denominator represents the Common Time Value of a Half Note.

Denominator Number = 2 = 1/2 = Whole Note

Time Signature = 4/2 = 4 half notes per measure.

One measure would count 1(2)2(2)3(2)4(2). Each half note begins on beats 1, 2, 3 and 4, outside of the (). The notes in () represent the length of time each half note is held for.

Quarter Notes:

Four notes triggered on pulse 1 2 3 and 4 would each represent 25% of all 4 steady pulses. A note representing 25% of all 4 pulses in Western Music Theory is called a Quarter Note.

This note looks like a closed circle with a stem point up on the right-side, and if you had 4 quarter notes per measure the time signature would look as follows: 4/4 = Common Time. Thus, our Common Time consist of 4 - Quarter Notes/Measure. The “4” in the denominator represents the Common Time Value of a Quarter Note.

Denominator Number = 4 = 1/4 = Quarter Notes

Time Signature = 4/4 = 4 quarter notes per measure.

One measure would count 1234. Each quarter note begins on beats 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Eighth Notes:

Eighth notes triggered on pulse 1 2 3 and 4, as well as the beats in-between those pulses would each represent 12.5% of all 4 steady pulses. A note representing 12.5% of all 4 pulses in Western Music Theory is called an Eighth Note.

This note looks like a closed circle with a stem point up on the right-side with a wing, and if you had 4 eighth notes per measure the time signature would look as follows: 4/8. The “8” in the denominator represents the Common Time Value of a Eighth Note.

Denominator Number = 8 = 1/8 = Eighth Notes

Time Signature = 4/8 = 4 eighth notes per measure.

One measure would count 1&2&. Each eighth note would be triggered on each beat, accommodating for the beats 1 and 2 and the beats in-between that directly follow them. (We count eighth notes verbally like, “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and…")

Sixteenth Notes:

Sixteenth notes triggered on pulse 1 2 3 and 4, as well as 4 beats in-between those pulses would each represent 6.25% of all 4 steady pulses. A note representing 6.25% of all 4 pulses in Western Music Theory is called a Sixteenth Note.

This note looks like a closed circle with a stem point up on the right-side with two wings, and if you had 4 sixteenth notes per measure, the time signature would look as follows: 4/16. The “16” in the denominator represents the Common Time Value of a Sixteenth Note.

Denominator Number = 16 = 1/16 = Eighth Notes

Time Signature = 4/16 = 4 sixteenth notes per measure.

One measure would count 1e&a. We’re dealing with 4 even beats per quarter note now, so that’s what you have here. This is quite a fast note. (We count sixteenth notes verbally like, “1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a…”)

So there you have it. By now you should know that the numerator of a time signature represents an even number of pulses per measure and the denominator represents what Common Time Value is deemed a pulse.

The common time values in the denominator are limited to 1 = whole notes; 2 = half notes; 4 = quarter notes; 8 = eighth notes; 16 = sixteenth notes; and if you want… 32 = thirty-second notes. These are again standardized by the 4/4 Time Signature = Common Time.