Playing with a Metronome — Important or useless?

Practicing or playing with a metronome is a whole different ballgame than just playing “into the void.”

I had to realize this myself with dismay back then when my “shredder lines” worked great at home, but were either too short or too long in the band (or the others were too fast or too slow! :P).

Also in the studio or in general during recordings, you are dependent on a metronome.

Therefore, it is important that shredder lines, as well as simple accompaniments like strumming patterns or fingerpicking patterns, are often practiced with a metronome.

How do I practice with a metronome?

A good way to practice with a metronome is to start with simple quarter notes.

Set a metronome to about 60 BPM (one beat per second). Then try to play a note exactly on the metronome beat. Count to 4 as marked above the notes.

Now we try the exact same thing, but with eighth notes. Here we play two notes while the metronome beats once. The notes played must be regular, not one longer than the other.

The exact same thing can now also be done with 16th notes, quarter note triplets and eighth note triplets.

16th notes

Quarter note triplets

Eighth note triplets

It gets exciting when we want to learn something very unusual, such as quintuplets…

…or septuplets.

Since it is quite difficult to just play a few quintuplets or septuplets off the cuff, there are simple methods to make them easier for our brain or our ear.

We simply replace them with a small technique exercise:

This way I always knew that the pattern had to start again on the third metronome beat. In the quintuplet example, the pattern is mirrored. 6–5–3–5–6 becomes 3–5–6–5–3. This only has to do with the fact that the same starting note does not have to be played twice in a row.

The same with the septuplets. Here I always knew that the pattern starts again after two beats. In the beginning it takes a little time until you get the patterns within the two beats. But with time you hear how it should sound before you have played it.

You can find a PDF of all exercises, audio files to listen to it, and Guitar Pro on my Patreon.