Practice guides / Beginner guide

Metronome guide for beginners

By Gabriel Serwas · Updated 22 August 2026

A metronome is only useful when you know what the click is asking of you. This page is the first session I want a student to run on SixtyBPM: set the tool correctly, count before you play, and leave with a pass rule instead of a vague plan to “play with a click”.

What this metronome is actually doing

SixtyBPM runs in the browser. There is no account and no install. The scheduler uses the Web Audio API, so the click stays aligned even if the tab is busy. Your last tempo, time signature, beat unit and sound are stored locally on the device, which means a phone in the practice room and a laptop in the kitchen can hold different settings.

The controls that change the musical meaning of the click are:

• Time signature — how many clicks make a bar, and which click is accented. 4/4 accents beat 1 of four; 3/4 accents beat 1 of three; 1/1 removes the bar accent entirely.
• Beat unit — what one click represents (quarter, eighth, and so on). This is independent of the time signature. For 6/8, use an eighth-note beat so six clicks fill the bar; feel them as two groups of three. There is no separate dotted-quarter button.
• Sound — Click for piano and guitar, Bell when you need to cut through brass or drums, Woodblock for voice. The click should never be louder than the note you are producing.
• Tempo — slider, +/−, or TAP. Keyboard: Space starts and stops, T taps.

If those two pickers still feel confusing, read time signatures and beat units before you go further. Wrong setup is the most common reason people say “the metronome doesn’t help”.

A 15-minute first session

Use one scale, one open string, or one bar you already know. Do not open a new piece for this session.

1. Minutes 0–2 — set 60 BPM, 4/4, quarter-note beat. Start the click and do nothing else. Listen until beat 1 is obvious. If you cannot tell which click is the accent, you will not know whether you are late on the downbeat.
2. Minutes 2–5 — count out loud, no instrument. Speak “1 2 3 4” with the click. Then speak “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and”. If the count drifts, the hands will drift.
3. Minutes 5–10 — one note per click. Long tones, open strings, or a one-octave scale. Your only job is a clean attack on beat 1 of every bar. Ignore expression.
4. Minutes 10–13 — two notes per click. Same pitch material. The pulse stays at 60; only the density changes. That is subdivision, not speed.
5. Minutes 13–15 — three clean run-throughs or stop. If you cannot play the same bar three times without a timing snag, do not raise tempo. Write down which beat failed.

Pass criteria before you raise tempo

“It felt okay” is not a criterion. Use one of these, and only one per session:

• Three consecutive repetitions with no missed downbeat.
• One minute of continuous playing where you can still name beat 1 with your voice.
• A phone recording in which the attack sits on the click, not ahead of it.

When a criterion is met, raise tempo by 5 BPM. If the next tempo fails twice, drop 10 BPM and rebuild. That is the whole SixtyBPM ramp. It is conservative on purpose: sloppy repetitions at 110 encode the error as well as the notes.

When 60 BPM is the wrong starting point

60 is the default because one click equals one second, which makes eighths, triplets and sixteenths easy to check. It is not a moral law.

• If the written pulse is a slow ballad already near 60, start at 50 or click eighths so there is enough grid to hear.
• If you are cleaning a fast passage you already know, start at the last tempo that was fully clean last week, not at 60 out of superstition. Drop to 60 only when that tempo collapses.
• If one click per bar is too empty, change the beat unit to eighths instead of doubling the BPM. Doubling BPM changes the character of the accent.

Common mistakes I still hear in lessons

• Playing at the click instead of through the phrase. The click is a reference, not a new accent on every note. Keep the musical shape; let the grid catch late attacks.
• Skipping rests. Hold the instrument still until the next written attack. Vague silence is still a timing error.
• Raising tempo because the session “felt easy”. Easy often means you stopped listening. Record 20 seconds.
• Never turning the click off. After a clean minute, mute 8 bars, then un-mute and check drift. Performance needs an inner pulse, not a permanent crutch.

What to do tomorrow

Repeat the same 15 minutes on the same bar. If it is clean, add the subdivision ladder. If the same beat keeps failing, you are probably rushing or dragging — diagnose that in rushing and dragging before you touch speed.