Opening it
The Metronome button at the top of every page opens it in a small window of its own, at the bottom right. It goes on playing as you move about the site, so you can look up a chord or a scale while it counts.
- Move it by dragging its title bar.
- Make it small with the – at its top right: it keeps playing, as a small strip with a play button and the tempo.
- Close it with the ×: that stops it. What you set is kept for next time.
Tempo
The big number is the tempo, from 20 to 500 beats a minute. Under it is its old Italian name (Grave, Largo, Larghetto up to Presto and Prestissimo), to read a score by.
- Type it. Click the number and type a new one.
- − and + go down or up by one; with Shift, by five. The − and + keys do the same.
- Tap it in time with a song, or press T: two taps give a tempo and up to nine are averaged, so keep tapping until it settles.
- ½ and 2× halve or double it, for practising a hard passage slowly or hearing a shuffle in half time.
- The slider sweeps the whole range.
The tempo always counts quarter notes, whatever the meter. In 7/8 at 120, the eighths go by at 240 a minute. A song in 12/8 is set as 4/4 in triplets, with the tempo on the big dotted-quarter pulse, as drummers count it.
The bar
Under the tempo is the bar: a column for each beat, and a step in it for each note the beat is split into. What you see is what you hear, and it lights up as it plays.
Each step's level
Click a step to change it. Each click moves it on to the next level:
With the Drum kit as the sound, the levels are drums instead: kick and snare together, kick drum, snare, hi-hat, off.
Beats and splits
- − and + beside the number of beats take one away or add one, up to 32 in a bar. + carries the pattern on, so a bar that was a drill goes on being that drill; with a beat picked, it adds a copy of that beat.
- The note beside it says what a beat is: quarters, eighths, sixteenths or halves (cut time). Click it for the next.
- ÷ under a beat splits that beat: in two, a triplet, in four, and on up to 8. Shift-click goes back one.
- Split, at the top right of the bar, splits every beat alike.
When the accents make groups, as 2+2+3 in a bar of 7/8, the groups are shown beside the number of beats.
Moving beats
- Drag a beat, by its number or by any of its steps, and drop it where it should go. A line shows the place, and the beat moves whole, its splits and levels with it.
- Drag a step within its own beat to change the order of that beat's steps, as to move an accent from the first sixteenth to the third.
- Click a beat's number to pick it. Then ◀ and ▶ move it a place at a time, Copy puts a copy straight after it, and Remove takes it out.
- Reset the bar makes every beat plain again, the first one accented.
Styles
A style sets everything at once: the meter, the tempo, the bar, the sound and the swing. There are 446 of them in 16 families, each with its picture.
Six of them. Click one to set it in the metronome.
- Technique drills: accent ladders, bursts, moving accents and other patterns for building speed and control.
- Songs: the click patterns of 253 well-known songs and pieces, at the tempo of the record, from rock, blues and metal to funk, Motown and dance. They are drum and click patterns to play along with, not the records themselves.
- Grooves by kind: rock and metal, blues and country, jazz, odd time, pop and hip-hop, Latin and world, dance, classical and screen.
Open them with the style's name at the top of the window, or the Styles button: they open in a panel beside the window, at the style you are on. Find one by typing a name, an artist, a meter, a feel or a tempo, such as swing, 6/8, SRV or 120. The arrows either side of the name, or the [ and ] keys, go to the style before or the next.
A style is a start, not a lock: change its tempo or its bar as you like, and save what you make as your own.
Your own styles
Save as mine, under the bar, keeps what is set now under a name and a colour: the bar and its meters, the tempo, the sound, the swing, a second click, and how the click is taken away and the drone, if you use them. Your styles come first in the styles panel, under Yours, in dark green.
To load one, open the styles (the style's name or Styles, at the top right of the window) and click it. It sets the bar, tempo and sound it was saved with, and its name and picture show at the top of the window. The arrows either side of the name, or the [ and ] keys, step through your own styles first, then the site's.
- Edit one with its pencil: its name, its colour, its tempo, its sound and its bar.
- Delete one with its ×, or Select several and delete them together. You are asked first each time.
Sounds
There are 16 click sounds: a plain click, mechanical tick, woodblock, beep, hi-hat, cowbell, side stick, clave, kick drum, snare drum, tom, shaker, tambourine, ride cymbal, triangle, and a drum kit that plays kick, snare and hats from the bar's levels. Pick one under the bar, or under Advanced options, where Hear it plays it and Level sets how loud the click sits against your guitar.
Under Accents, beats and between are three more levels: one for the accents, one for the beats, and one for the steps that split a beat. Turn the last one down to keep the beat clear in a fast drill.
Your own recordings
Add a sound, under Your sounds, takes a short recording (a WAV, MP3, OGG or M4A file, up to 2 MB) and makes it a click, up to 12 of them. Give it a second recording for the accent if you like; without one, the accent is the same sound, louder. Silence at the start of a file is skipped and the level is evened out, so it clicks on time.
Your recordings stay in this browser and are sent nowhere. A style or set that names one plays with the plain Click anywhere it is missing.
Count-in, swing and more
Advanced options, at the foot of the window, opens the rest, in tabs: Click, Training, Set lists, Screen, Log and Share. Each part folds away under its heading, and the heading says what it is set to.
- Count-in
- Off, or 1, 2 or 4 bars before the music starts, at the tempo to come. Before every loop counts in each time round. The count-in is heard even with the click off.
- Swing
- How late the second note of each pair falls: 50% is straight, 67% a triplet shuffle, up to 75%. Swing the eighths, or the sixteenths as funk does.
- Meters, bar by bar
- Type a list such as 4/4 7/8 3/4 and it plays a bar of each in turn, round and round. Leave it empty for the one meter.
- Second click
- A click of its own sound, 2 to 7 times evenly through each bar, against the beats: 3 in a bar of 4 is three against four. It has its own sound and level.
- Click while playing
- Turns the click off and on without stopping, as when you want only the count-in.
Training
The Training tab holds the tools for building speed and keeping time. The Speed trainer also has a button of its own under the bar.
- Take the click away
- Your own sense of time does the work while the click is gone. Bars off plays some bars and leaves some silent; Quiet bars makes them soft instead; Random silences a share of the beats or bars (the same ones each time round, so a loop can be learned, and the first beat kept if you like); Fade ladder takes the click away a step at a time: Every beat → 2 & 4 → Downbeat only → 3 bars on, 1 off → 1 bar on, 1 off → 75% silent.
- Speed trainer
- Raises the tempo as you play, up to a goal you set, and keeps the tempo it reached. It can rise in four ways: Step up, Up and down, By the minute or Bursts at the goal. A step is +1, +2, +5 or +10, every so many bars or minutes. Bursts at the goal plays one time round at the goal and the next at your own tempo: the fast motion first, then the clean one.
- Drone
- A low, steady note under the click, the root alone or the root and fifth, in the key you choose. Play a scale against it to hear each note's colour.
- Stop after
- A practice timer: it stops itself after 5 to 30 minutes, and the log notes the time.
- Timing check
- While it plays, tap the button, or J, on each click. It tells you how early or late you are on average, and how steady.
Set lists
A set list plays your own styles one after another. Each part plays for so many bars, so many minutes, or until you press Next, with a count-in between if you like: a warm-up routine, or a gig's songs in order at their tempos. Save a style of your own first; each one becomes a part you can add.
Practice log
What you play is added to the log on its own, with its time and its tempos. At the top are your minutes today, in the last 7 days, and how many days in a row you have played.
- New folder makes a folder to keep things in, and folders can go inside folders. Drag a thing by its grip into a folder, or onto the line at the foot to take it out.
- Add practice logs something you did away from the site.
- Open a thing to see its sessions, newest first, and to fix a time, a tempo or a note, or to say how it went.
- Select picks several things, to move them to a folder or remove them.
The log starts empty, and is yours to arrange.
Screen and phone
- Beat lights
- Each step of the bar lights as it sounds.
- Flash the screen
- A flash on each beat, or on the first beat only when beats come faster than three a second. Off when your device asks for less motion.
- Lights later by
- Holds the lights back so they meet the sound, as your device reports its delay; Bluetooth speakers and headphones may need more.
- Keep the screen awake
- While it plays, so a phone on a music stand does not lock and stop.
- Keep clicking when the phone locks
- On a phone, the click goes on with the screen locked or in another app, and the lock screen shows it playing, with stop and play.
- Play along with other music
- On iPhone and iPad, the click mixes with your music app instead of pausing it.
- Vibrate on the beat
- On Android phones.
Keys
With the metronome open and nothing typed into a box:
| Space | Play or stop |
| M | Open the metronome; again, its advanced options |
| T | Tap the tempo |
| + − | Faster or slower by one; with Shift, by five |
| [ ] | The style before, the next style |
| C | Click on or off |
| L | Loop on or off |
| J | Tap for the timing check |
Free and the full version
Everything in this guide is free: every style, sound, tool and setting, with no limit on time.
Your own styles, set lists, settings and practice log are kept in the browser you use. The full version (US$29, one payment) keeps them with your licence key, so they are the same in every browser where you enter it, and lets you download your log as a spreadsheet.