Metronome
A metronome in your browser: time signatures, subdivisions, swing, polyrhythms, silent bars for working on fills, and a tempo that moves on its own.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, logged or stored.
Sound and volume
Practice settings
Set a tempo, a number of beats to the bar and a subdivision, and press play. The clicks are generated in your browser; nothing is downloaded and nothing is sent.
Pick a rhythm instead and the clicks stop being even: a samba puts the weight on the second beat the way a surdo does, a clave runs its five strokes across two bars. The beat can keep clicking underneath, which is how you check you are still where you think you are.
The same list also holds what a metronome cannot count on its own: swung eighths, seven in 2+2+3, five against four. Whatever you pick, the grid it plays is drawn under the controls, so you can see what you are about to hear.
For a drummer there is a phrase rather than a stream of bars: the first bar of each one is marked, the counter says where you are in it, and the last bars can be silenced so the gap falls on the fill that ends the phrase. Pick a wood or stick sound while you are at it — a sine tone does not survive a cymbal.
How it works
Each click is a short burst from an oscillator, shaped by a quick fade so it sounds like a tick rather than a beep. The first beat of the bar is higher and louder when accents are on, which is what lets you hear where the bar starts without counting.
The timing does not come from a timer. Browser timers drift by several milliseconds and stutter whenever the page is busy, which is audible and maddening. Instead each click is scheduled ahead of time against the audio clock, which runs independently of the page, and a short timer only tops up the queue. The result stays steady while you scroll, resize or type.
Subdivisions divide the beat rather than changing it: at 100 BPM with eighth notes there are still 100 beats a minute, with a quieter click halfway between each pair.
A rhythm is a grid of equal steps with a stroke on some of them, at one of three strengths, spread over one or two bars. Playing one is the same work as playing a plain click — the same list, filled differently — so the tempo slider, the lights and the scheduling behave identically whichever you choose. The rhythm brings its own bar and its own subdivision with it, which is why those two controls go quiet while one is selected.
Two of the families in that list are computed rather than notated. A grouped metre is a way of counting — 7/8 as 2+2+3 puts a stronger stroke where each group starts, and the tempo counts the pulse rather than the bar. A polyrhythm is arithmetic: five against four runs on a grid of twenty steps, the lowest common multiple, so both voices land exactly on the grid and nothing is rounded.
Bars are counted in phrases rather than one after another, because that is how music is built and where the trouble is. A drummer plays a fill at the end of a phrase to announce what comes next, and a fill is exactly where the tempo slips: the hands are busy and the pulse stops being felt. So the first bar of every phrase is marked with a sound of its own, the counter says which bar of the phrase you are in, and the silences are counted back from the end of the phrase — the gap falls on the fill, not wherever the clock happened to be when you pressed play.
The silence is not the exercise. What tells you whether you rushed or dragged is the click coming back, on the first beat of the next phrase, either with you or not. Putting the gaps anywhere instead is a different exercise and a harder one: you cannot lean on knowing when the click is due.
Changing the tempo by a few BPM every so many bars takes a passage from where it is playable to where it needs to be without you stopping to move a slider. The change can be negative, which is the harder direction — slow is where a wandering pulse has nowhere to hide — and it can start over when it arrives, so a session runs without being touched.
Parts are told apart by pitch rather than by volume: the low stroke is the drum you feel, the middle one carries the pattern, the high one is the subdivision running underneath. An accent is both louder and higher, because a louder click at the same pitch reads as nearer rather than as stressed.
The sine tone is the default and the wrong choice behind a drum kit. A sine has no transient — nothing sharp at its start — so a snare and a cymbal do not cover it so much as erase it. The other three timbres are noise through a filter, which is what a woodblock is, and they carry. None of them is a recording: an audio file would mean a metronome that goes quiet exactly when the network does.
Frequently asked questions
Why does nothing happen until I press play?
Browsers refuse to produce sound until the visitor has interacted with the page — a rule that exists because of pages that played audio at people unprompted. The first press starts the audio engine as well as the metronome.
Does it keep time if I switch tabs?
Usually, but not reliably. Browsers throttle timers in background tabs to save power, and while the scheduling here survives most of that, a backgrounded tab is not something to rehearse against. Keep it visible.
How do I practise not rushing my fills?
Set the phrase to the length you actually play — four or eight bars — and silence the last one. You get the groove with a click, then nothing over the fill, then the click back on the first beat of the next phrase. If you are early it arrives late and if you dragged it arrives early, and either way you hear it before anybody else does. Start at one silent bar in four; two in eight is already hard.
Can I use the keyboard?
Space or Enter starts and stops. The up and down arrows move the tempo by one, with Shift by five. T taps it. F goes full screen, which is what makes the flash readable from behind a kit. None of them fires while you are typing in a field.
Why does 7/8 sound slower than 4/4 at the same BPM?
Because a grouped metre counts its pulse rather than its bar. At 100 BPM a 7/8 in 2+2+3 gives you a hundred eighth notes a minute, which is a little over fourteen bars; a 4/4 at 100 gives you twenty-five. That is the reading that makes the number mean the same thing as the one in your head while you count.
Are the polyrhythms exact?
Yes, and that is the point of computing them rather than tapping them out. Five against four is laid on a grid of twenty steps — the lowest common multiple of the two — so every stroke of both voices falls on a whole step. Nothing is rounded, and the two do not drift apart however long you leave it running.
Why are partido alto, baião and the tamborim not here?
Because their notation differs between schools and between teachers, and a rhythm written down wrong is worse than one left out — you would hear it immediately and stop trusting the rest. What is listed is limited to figures that are written the same way wherever you look. More can be added, but each one has to arrive with a notation somebody can point at.
Is the bossa nova clave a real thing?
It is a real figure and a contested name. The pattern is genuinely useful to practise against, but the idea that bossa nova is played from a clave the way Cuban son is comes from North American teaching rather than from Brazil. Treat it as a reference to place yourself against, not as a part somebody plays.
Why is samba in 2/4 and only two strokes?
The two strokes are the surdo de marcação, and the second one is the whole point: samba leans on the second beat, and lining that up is what a metronome can actually help with. The even sixteenths above it are the caixa keeping the subdivision, without claiming which of them a given school accents.
How do I find the tempo of a track?
Tap it out with the tap tempo tool, then bring the number here. If you need the tempo as note durations in milliseconds — for a delay or an LFO — the BPM to milliseconds tool has the whole table.
Good to know
- Runs entirely in your browser. No audio file is downloaded and nothing is sent anywhere.
- Timing accuracy depends on your browser and your device. This is a practice tool, not a reference clock.
- The rhythms are notated figures, not interpretations. Each one carries, in the source, what is being claimed and what is not. No tempo is suggested for any of them: a samba is played across a wide range and a number printed here would be an invention.
- The grouped metres and the polyrhythms are computed, and claim nothing about any tradition. 7/8 in 2+2+3 is a way of counting seven, not a rhythm belonging to anybody.