A metronome does one job: it gives you a pulse that doesn’t speed up when the music gets exciting or slow down when it gets hard. Practicing with one shows you exactly where your own timing bends, which is the first step to fixing it.
The classic method is slow, clean, then gradually faster. Find a tempo where you can play a passage without mistakes and without tension. Play it a few times there, then raise the tempo by a few BPM. When you start to fumble, drop back to the last tempo that felt easy and build up again. The speed trainer on this page automates this: set a step, a number of bars and a target, and it raises the tempo on a bar line so you can keep playing.
Listen for where your notes land against the click. If the click disappears under your notes, you’re on it. If you hear the click just before your note, you’re dragging; just after, you’re rushing. Many players rush runs and drag long notes, so practice both.
Once you’re comfortable, make the metronome do less. Mute beats 2, 3 and 4 so only the downbeat sounds, or put the click on beats 2 and 4 only, the way jazz and funk musicians do. Fewer clicks means your own sense of time has to fill the gaps, and that’s what carries over to playing with other people.
Choosing a tempo: Italian markings and BPM
Many scores give a tempo in words rather than numbers. The table below lists the common Italian markings from slowest to fastest with typical BPM ranges. They are conventions, not rules: references disagree by a few BPM, ranges overlap, and the right tempo also depends on the style, the hall and the player. The slider on this page uses the ranges printed on a traditional mechanical metronome face.
| Marking | Meaning | Typical BPM |
|---|---|---|
| Grave | very slow and solemn | below 40 |
| Largo | broad, slow | 40–60 |
| Larghetto | a little less slow than largo | 60–66 |
| Adagio | slow, at ease | 66–76 |
| Andante | at a walking pace | 76–108 |
| Moderato | moderate | 108–120 |
| Allegretto | moderately fast, lighter than allegro | around 100–128 |
| Allegro | fast and bright | 120–168 |
| Vivace | lively | around 156–176 |
| Presto | very fast | 168–200 |
| Prestissimo | as fast as possible | 200 and above |
If a score says “M.M. ♩ = 96”, M.M. stands for Maelzel’s Metronome, after the 19th-century device, and it means 96 quarter notes per minute. When a piece gives only a word, choose a tempo inside the range that lets the fastest notes stay clear, then adjust by ear.
For practice, the target tempo is only the destination. Start at roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of it, play cleanly, and climb. If a song’s tempo isn’t written down, tap along with a recording on Tap Tempo or drop the audio into BPM Finder to measure it.
Subdivisions, triplets and odd meters
Subdivisions split each beat into smaller, quieter clicks. Two per beat gives eighth notes in 4/4, three gives triplets, four gives sixteenths. They’re the most useful practice setting at slow tempos, where the gap between beats is long enough for your timing to drift, and for passages full of fast notes, where you need to hear exactly where each note belongs.
Time signatures with 8 on the bottom work differently from 3/4 or 4/4. In 6/8 there are six eighth notes per bar, but most music in 6/8 is felt in two big beats of three eighths each. That’s why this metronome accents beats 1 and 4 in 6/8, beats 1, 4 and 7 in 9/8, and 1, 4, 7 and 10 in 12/8. In these meters the BPM counts the eighth notes, so 6/8 at 180 BPM is the same speed as two dotted-quarter beats at 60.
Odd meters have uneven groups. 7/8 is commonly grouped 2+2+3, so the default pattern accents beats 1, 3 and 5. Pieces grouped 3+2+2 or 2+3+2 exist too: click the beats to move the accents until the pattern matches your music. 5/4 is often felt as 3+2; accent beat 4 if that helps.
If you’d rather count 6/8 as two beats, set the meter to 2/4 and choose triplets. You’ll hear the same rhythm, but the BPM now counts dotted quarters, which is how many scores in compound time mark their tempo.
Why browser metronomes drift, and how this one doesn’t
A simple web metronome plays a sound every time a JavaScript timer fires. Those timers aren’t precise: they can fire late when the page is busy, and browsers deliberately slow them down in background tabs. The result is a beat that wobbles, or stalls when you switch tabs.
This metronome uses the Web Audio clock instead, which runs on the audio hardware. A small scheduler wakes up every 25 milliseconds and books the next clicks on that clock, a tenth of a second ahead. Each click time is calculated from the moment you pressed Start, not added up beat by beat, so rounding errors can’t pile up over a long session. In a background tab the scheduler books clicks further ahead, so the beat carries on even when the browser slows its timers.
The beat lights and playhead follow the audio output clock, not a separate timer, so what you see matches what you hear. If you use Bluetooth headphones, the sound reaches your ears later than the lights; that delay is constant, so your practice timing isn’t affected, but wired headphones or speakers keep sound and picture together.