Practice tools · 40–240 BPM
Online Metronome
A click you can trust, with the beat shown as well as sounded. Tap tempo, any time signature, subdivisions, and the spacebar to start and stop. Free, no signup.
Reading the metronome
The large number is the tempo in beats per minute — how many beats fit into a minute, so 120 BPM is two beats every second. Beside it is the traditional Italian marking for that speed, which is what a score will print instead of a number: Adagio is slow, Andante is a walking pace, Allegro is brisk, Presto is fast.
The row of lamps is one bar. The wider lamp is beat 1, and each lights as its beat sounds, so you can follow the bar with the volume down — useful in a shared room, and the reason the beat is never audio-only here.
How to actually use it
- Find the tempo you can play cleanly, not the tempo the piece is marked at. Play the hardest bar, not the easiest one — the passage is only as fast as its worst measure.
- Raise it in small steps. Around 5 BPM at a time is enough to be progress and small enough that your hands do not notice.
- Subdivide when you rush. Rushing happens in the gap between beats; filling that gap with eighths or sixteenths removes the place the error lives.
- Try beat 2 and 4 only. Set the tempo to half and think of the clicks as the backbeat. It is much harder, and it is what playing with other people feels like.
It keeps working without a connection
The click is synthesised in your browser rather than streamed, so once the page has loaded, the metronome needs no network at all. Nothing is recorded, nothing is uploaded and there is no microphone involved — see the tuning note generator for the same approach to pitch.
Frequently asked questions
Is an online metronome accurate enough to practise with?
This one is. The clicks are scheduled against the browser's audio clock rather than a JavaScript timer, which is the difference between a metronome that holds its tempo for an hour and one that drifts noticeably within a minute. What a browser cannot control is output latency — Bluetooth headphones typically add 100–300 ms — so the click may reach your ears slightly after it was generated. The spacing between clicks stays exact either way, which is what a metronome is for.
What tempo should I practise at?
Slower than feels satisfying. Set the tempo where you can play the passage perfectly twice in a row, then raise it by about 5 BPM. If you make a mistake, drop back. Practising a passage fast and wrong just rehearses the mistake, and most students spend weeks doing exactly that.
What do the subdivisions do?
They click the smaller notes between the beats — eighths, triplets or sixteenths. This is the fastest cure for rushing, because it removes the empty space where your internal clock drifts. Start with the subdivision on, then turn it off once the passage is steady and see whether the beat still lands.
Why does beat 1 sound different?
That is the accent, and it marks the start of each bar so you can hear where you are without counting. Turn it off with the Accent beat 1 button, or set Beats per bar to None if you want an undifferentiated pulse — useful when you are practising a phrase that crosses the barline.
How do I use tap tempo?
Tap the button in time with the music, four or more times. The tempo is the average of your recent taps, so a stray tap gets diluted rather than throwing the reading off. Stop tapping for two seconds and the next tap starts a fresh count.