Practice guides / Piano

Metronome practice for piano

By Gabriel Serwas · Updated 22 August 2026

Piano timing problems are usually coordination and tone, not “not hearing the beat”. The left hand has more notes, the pedal smears the grid, and rubato gets used as cover. Use SixtyBPM to make those three things separable.

Evenness before repertoire

60 BPM, 4/4, one note per click, five-finger pattern or a one-octave scale. Listen for thumb-crossing thumps and weak 4th/5th fingers. If those spikes exist, raising tempo only publishes them.

Pass: you can name which finger was loud. If you cannot, you are not listening yet. Drop the metronome volume so the piano, not the Bell sound, is the loud event.

Hands separate is not a beginner trick

The hand with more notes rushes to “finish the job”. Practise that hand alone at the same 60 BPM you will use together. Then the other hand. Then both, still one attack per click even if the score is full of sixteenths — you are allowed to play a skeletal version.

1. Right hand, 4–8 bars.
2. Left hand, same bars, same tempo.
3. Together, quarters only.
4. Written rhythm only after combined quarters are stable.

If together collapses, you do not need a faster click. You need the separate-hand loop again. Compensating with speed is how uneven Bach inventions get baked in.

Pedal on a grid

Late pedal changes create a wash that hides whether the fingers were even on time. Take a four-chord hymn or pop progression. Pedal change exactly on beat 1 at 60 BPM. Record one take with pedal and one dry. If the dry take has clearer rhythm, the pedal was masking, not helping.

For repertoire with syncopated harmony, practise the finger rhythm dry until it is honest, then add the written pedal. Do not add both problems in the same ten minutes.

2:3 at 60 BPM

Keep the click on quarters. Right hand plays triplets (three notes per click), left hand plays eighths (two notes per click), or the reverse. Two bars, then rest a bar, then two bars. The rest is part of the drill: you should re-enter on beat 1 without a scoop.

This is easier at 60 than at “andante” because you can hear the common downbeat. If 2:3 is still noise, drop to one hand with triplets against the click, then add the second hand on two pitches only (C and G), not a full texture.

When the click should come off

Romantic repertoire needs rubato. The metronome’s job is to make sure the average pulse still exists, not to forbid stretching.

• Learn the skeleton with click until harmonic downbeats are reliable (usually bass notes on beat 1).
• Practise the stretch between those downbeats, then check that beat 1 of the next bar still meets the click.
• If beat 1 of the next bar is late after every lyrical phrase, that is not rubato. That is dragging. Fix it with the mute-unmute test in rushing and dragging.

12-minute piano session

1. 3 min scale or five-finger evenness at 60.
2. 4 min hardest four bars, hands separate then together.
3. 3 min written figuration against a quarter click (Alberti, broken chords).
4. 2 min the same phrase with dynamics, still at a tempo that does not spike the wrists.

For the physiology behind staying slow until the motion is cheap, use why slow practice works. For a month of the same excerpt, use the 30-day plan.