Click, click, click, click, click, click, click...

Making friends with the metronome is very important because it will help you develop your sense of rhythm and keep your tempo consistent. If you practise with one, you will find that it helps you develop your ‘inner metronome', so that your time improves even when you're not playing to a metronome or ‘click'.

It's REALLY important that you can hear the metronome clearly, so use headphones if you can't hear it very well, or leave it resting on top of your guitar where it is close to your ear!

I recommend getting a digital metronome. I do like ‘old skool' stuff, but the old ‘tick-tock' metronomes are limited in the tempi (the plural of tempo!) you can choose from and I think it is a very good idea to have one that can go at every tempo. In this modern era the easiest to use is a Metronome App for your smart phone - and funnily enough, I have one available for sale, more on that later!

B. P. M.

Tempi are measured in BPM (Beats Per Minute); 60bpm equals one click every second.

A very useful feature on some metronomes is being able to set an accent. For most of this course you will be playing in 4/4 time, so set the beat to ‘4', and that way it will accent the first beat of each bar with a different sound so you will always know where ‘1' is. This is good for making sure that you put the right number of beats in each bar!

Metronomes are also good at inducing panic in people because they make you get things done at a consistent pace! If you are one of those (many!) people that are quite inconsistent with your One- Minute changes, a small amount of time doing the changes with the metronome might well help you sort that out. Playing along and making sure you hit a chord with every click (or every second click) is a really good way of developing your internal rhythm (and panic control!).

The Time Trainer Metronome

Many years ago now I decided to have a metronome made that had all the features I wanted and was super accurate and reliable as there were none around that ticked all the boxes for me. My "Time Trainer Metronome" was born and as the name suggests it has some awesome "training" modes that will help you develop your internal time quickly and easily! There is a countdown timer as well which you can use to time your practice sessions to make sure that you are spending the right amount of time on the right things.

It is available for Apple and Android. You can see list of all my apps here.

Moving On...

Now we are going to check out how to do amazing technical fast rock guitar, a variation of finger tapping... just joking. We're just going to be tapping our feet ;) wey hey.