The BEST way to use a metronome

Metronome practice is something that almost every music teacher would have instructed you to do at some point. The inevitable question “So…have you practiced this with the metronome?” came up in my lessons a fair bit, and I must admit that I didn’t always spend as much time as I should have on improving this aspect of my playing. There were always much more interesting things to work on, like playing fast, high, and loud! 😉 Practising slowly and carefully with a metronome definitely wasn’t seen as the most exciting part of my day, but I’ve managed to change my ways a bit over the years!

Maintaining a steady tempo, along with rhythmic precision, are essential skills one has to develop as a musician. So when my teachers would ask about my metronome practice (or lack there of), I always knew it was a nice way of saying “Your rhythm and tempo are pretty dodgy, so you need to do some work!” Once I got over the sting of realising that my sense of pulse kinda sucked, I started to dedicate more time in ironing out my timing kinks.

Whilst many teachers politely ask their students to dust off their metronome (that’s if the student can even find it!😫) and use it in their practice, explicit instruction and demonstration of HOW to use a metronome effectively aren’t shown nearly enough – I know I’m guilty of this too! A lack of instruction can result in a poor understanding of how to use a metronome to improving your sense of pulse and rhythm. Musicians then begin to rely too heavily on their metronome to stay in time, and wonder why things go wrong once they switch off the click and go it alone.

So what’s the best way to use your metronome to strengthen your inner pulse? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

Interestingly, there has been a study done (link below) on how our brains work when playing with a metronome, and the changes that occur when maintaining tempo without metronome assistance. In the study, researchers found that there were fundamental neurological differences between when we play with a metronome, and when we have to subdivide and keep tempo by ourselves. 🧠

When playing with a metronome, certain regions of the brain are activated to keep in time with the clicks. However once the metronome is switched off, other regions of the brain (called the Sensorimotor loop) become active in trying to maintain that same tempo. This means that in order to improve your inner pulse, you need to use the metronome as a guide, and not as a crutch. Putting your metronome on and sticking with the clicks generally won’t help to improve your sense of timing.

So does this mean you can chuck out your metronome for good!?

Unfortunately not!

What you have to do is approach your metronome practice in a way that gradually shifts your reliance away from the metronome, and onto yourself. Learning to play at a steady tempo, especially for younger students, is something that can take quite a while to solidify. As with any skill development, patience is key.

Here are a few basic exercises you can begin with:

1. Start off by putting your metronome at a moderate tempo, crotchet/quarter-note = 60.
Say the beat numbers out loud in time with the clicks. Then add the subdivisions in quavers/eighth-notes eg. 1-&-2-&-3-&-4-& etc., and in semiquavers/sixteenth-notes 1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a etc.
If you prefer, you can substitute the numbers for words, which can make it a bit more fun – for quavers/eighth-notes I use “piz-za”, and for semiquavers/sixteenth-notes I use “wat-er-me-lon”, but you can personalise it by making up your own word combinations. Let me know which words you might use in the comments below!

2. Clap, tap, or step along in time with the clicks. Incorporating movement with the pulse can literally help you “feel” the beat.

3. Grab your instrument and choose a scale that you know well. Play the whole scale, firstly with 1 beat of semiquavers/sixteenth-notes for each pitch, and then with triplets, quavers/eighth-notes, crotchets/quarter-notes, and minims/half-notes. Make sure to subdivide while you’re playing the longer note lengths.

Once you’re feeling more comfortable, then you can start to increase the tempo, alternating between playing with and without the metronome for each repetition.

If you’ve already got a pretty good handle on keeping a steady pulse, you can start to incorporate a few more challenging exercises in the mix. Remember that the idea is to further strengthen your inner pulse by decreasing your reliance on the metronome. This means reducing the number of clicks you hear, which forces you to be more active in subdividing throughout each bar.

Some extended exercises are:

1. Put the clicks on the offbeats and say the subdivisions out loud. You can get into this exercise by starting the first click on the word “and” eg. &-1-&-2-&-3-&-4-& etc. After a few bars you can stop counting out loud, but still listen to the clicks of the metronome. If the clicks switch around in your head so that you hear them on the beat, this indicates that you have a weaker sense of pulse.
This exercise might throw you off balance to start with, but after a bit of practice you will hopefully be grooving along in no time!

2. Reduce the number of clicks in each bar to every 2nd beat i.e. click on beats 1&3 or 2&4. This means that you have to do a bit of counting yourself in order to keep a steady tempo.

3. Click on the downbeat of each bar. Again, you have to count and subdivide a lot more, and this will really show up how accurate your inner pulse and subdivision really is.

4. Click on the downbeat of every 2nd bar, 3rd bar etc. Here you can change your metronome settings to make each bar an 8/4 or 12/4 time signature, then have the click set for the first beat of the bar.

By starting to incorporate these kinds of exercises into your metronome practice, you’ll hopefully find it much more fun, engaging, and most importantly, effective! Good luck, and happy metronoming!

Got any other metronome exercises you find useful? Share them below in the comments!

Study:
Rao, S.M., et al., (1997). “Distributed Neural Systems Underlying the Timing of Movements”
The Journal of Neuroscience 17(14): 5528-5535.