Online metronome

Set the tempo with the slider or the buttons, pick a time signature, and press Start (or the space bar). The first beat of each bar is accented. Tap along with any music to find its BPM.

How to practice with a metronome

A metronome does one job: it keeps a beat that doesn't drift, so you can hear when you rush or drag. Used well, it's the fastest way to make a passage both clean and fast.

1. Find your clean tempo. Start slow enough to play the passage perfectly. For a new chord change or scale, that is often 60 BPM or lower.
2. Play it right three times in a row. Not once. Three clean repetitions tell you the tempo is really under control.
3. Go up a little. Add 4 or 5 BPM with the +5 button and repeat. If it falls apart, drop back 10 and build again.
4. Stop before you're tired. Ten focused minutes beat an hour of sloppy runs. Write down the tempo you reached so tomorrow starts close to it.
5. Make the click feel like the band. Once you are steady, set the metronome to half speed and hear the clicks as beats 2 and 4, the way a drummer's snare lands in a lot of pop and rock.

For chord changes, a good target is one strum per click, changing chord every four clicks. The chord progression players have their own tempo slider if you'd rather practice against the chords themselves.

Tempo markings and their BPM

Classical scores often give an Italian tempo word instead of a number. These ranges are the usual approximations; editions and metronome makers vary a little, and the music itself has the final say. Press a button to set the metronome to a tempo in that range.

Time signatures: 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and 6/8

The time signature buttons change how many clicks make a bar. The first click of every bar has a higher, accented sound, so you always know where "one" is.

• 4/4: four beats per bar, the default for most pop, rock, country and folk. Count 1 2 3 4.
• 3/4: three beats per bar, the waltz feel. Count 1 2 3.
• 2/4: two beats per bar, used for marches and polkas. Count 1 2.
• 6/8: six eighth notes per bar, grouped as two sets of three. Set the BPM to the eighth-note speed; the metronome clicks all six and accents the first. Count 1 2 3 4 5 6, leaning on 1 and 4.

For how time signatures look on the page, and how note values fit into a bar, see how to read music.

Tap tempo: find the BPM of any song

Play a recording and press Tap tempo in time with the beat, at least four times. The metronome averages your taps over the last three seconds and jumps to that BPM. Tap again to refine it. Most pop music sits somewhere between 90 and 130 BPM; slow ballads are often 60 to 80.

What BPM means

BPM is beats per minute. At 60 BPM each click is exactly one second apart; at 120 BPM there are two clicks per second. The slider here runs from 30 to 260 BPM, which covers everything from a very slow ballad to fast bluegrass.

More free practice tools

Tune up first with the guitar tuner, ukulele tuner or bass tuner. Build a loop to play along with in the progression builder, or see everything on the tools page.

Updated September 2026.