Online metronome

Why practise with a metronome?

A metronome tells you the truth about your timing. Without one, most players speed up in easy parts and slow down in hard ones without noticing. Practising with a click builds an internal pulse, makes you play cleanly with other musicians and lets you measure progress in a way you can trust: if you could play a passage at 80 BPM last week and 92 today, you have improved.

The trick is to start slower than you think. Choose a tempo where you can play the passage perfectly three times in a row, then raise it a few BPM at a time.

Tempo markings and BPM

The name above the number is the classical tempo marking for that speed. They are approximate ranges, not exact values:

• Largo — very slow, around 40–60 BPM
• Adagio — slow, around 66–76 BPM
• Andante — walking pace, around 76–108 BPM
• Moderato — moderate, around 108–120 BPM
• Allegro — fast and bright, around 120–156 BPM
• Vivace and Presto — very fast, 156 BPM and above

Subdivisions and time signatures

Subdivisions add quieter clicks between the beats. Eighth notes help with strumming and alternate picking, triplets with shuffles and blues, sixteenths with funk and fast runs. Hearing the subdivision makes it much harder to rush.

Beats per bar sets where the accent falls. 4/4 is four beats, 3/4 three. For 6/8, choose 6 beats with no subdivision at a fast tempo, or 2 beats with triplets at a slower one — both feel the same.

Accurate timing in a browser

Many web metronomes use simple timers that drift when the page is busy. This one schedules each click a fraction of a second ahead on the Web Audio clock, the same approach professional audio apps use, so the beat stays locked even on a phone.