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Pulse, tempo and the metronome
The heartbeat of music, BPM and how to practise with a metronome.
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Stop 1 of 6
The heartbeat of music, BPM and how to practise with a metronome.
Welcome to the river. So far you have learned what to play: chords, changes, down-strums. In this stage you learn when to play it. Rhythm is the riverbed music flows through: a melody with perfect notes but no steady pulse spills over its banks, while a three-chord song with a solid rhythm sounds like real music. We start with the most basic and most important thing of all: the heartbeat.
Press Listen and do nothing else: just listen. Then press it again and tap your foot, once with every click.
What your foot is doing is following the : the regular heartbeat underneath almost all music. It isn't a melody or a chord; it's the invisible grid every note sits on. Each of those taps is called a .
Think about how you walk. Your steps have a regular rhythm even when you don't think about it; if someone walks beside you, before long you are stepping together without noticing. Music works the same way: the pulse is the shared step that lets a guitarist, a bass player and a singer move together.
Now listen to the same pulse on a chord. The guitar strums an Em on every beat; notice that nothing else is needed for it to sound like a "song":
The pulse can go slow or fast. That speed is called , and it's measured in : beats per minute. A tempo of 60 BPM gives exactly one beat per second, like the second hand of a clock. At 120 BPM two beats fit into every second.
Compare the same rhythm at two tempos. The written notes are identical; only the speed of the pulse changes:
60 BPM: relaxed
120 BPM: lively
For centuries tempo was given with Italian words, which you'll still find in sheet music. They're only a guide: every era and every performer reads them a little differently.
| Marking | Meaning | Approximate range |
|---|---|---|
| Largo, Adagio | Slow, broad | 50–75 BPM |
| Andante | "At a walking pace" | 75–105 BPM |
| Moderato | Moderate | 105–120 BPM |
| Allegro | Fast and cheerful | 120–155 BPM |
| Presto | Very fast | over 165 BPM |
If a minute has 60 seconds and n beats sound per minute, each beat lasts seconds. At 60 BPM, 1 second; at 80 BPM, 0.75 s; at 120 BPM, 0.5 s; at 90 BPM, 0.667 s. This simple sum explains why doubling the tempo demands twice as many movements per second, and why going from 60 to 70 BPM (17% faster) feels much bigger than going from 150 to 160 (7%). That's why, when practising, small tempo steps matter more the slower you go.
A marks the pulse with a regular click at a fixed tempo. It's musicians' most useful and most hated tool: at first it feels like it's "chasing you", but it's an honest mirror. It tells you whether you speed up, whether you slow down at the changes, or whether a passage only works when you play slowly.
Try this metronome. The lights mark the four beats; the first is highlighted because the first beat of each group sounds stronger:
Step 1 of 3 · 1. A click on every beat
The basics: one click per beat, and you play exactly with it. Try to make the click "disappear" inside your strum: if you hear it clearly apart from your strum, you're early or late.
Counting out loud sounds childish, but it's what professionals do when something doesn't fit. When you say "1, 2, 3, 4" out loud, your mouth, ears and hands share one clock. Counting only "in your head" fails as soon as the fretting hand gets busy: your thoughts go to the chord and the count slips away without you noticing.
Before starting, every band does a : "one, two, three, four" and go. That way everyone starts at the same tempo. The examples on this journey do the same when the Click button is on: one bar of clicks before the first note.
Strum this pattern while counting out loud. The arrow is a downstroke; the dot is the hand rising without touching (you'll study it properly two stops from now):
You'll have noticed we count in fours, not "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…". That's because the pulse hardly ever comes loose: it's grouped. Each group of beats is called a (or measure), and in notation it sits between two vertical lines, the bar lines. The first beat of each bar, the , is like the first step of each lap: your body feels it as a small "landing".
The two numbers at the start of the music, like the 4/4 in the examples, are the : the top one tells you how many beats are in each bar. For now that's all you need; in Time signatures you'll meet 2/4, 3/4 and 6/8.
Listen to how the metronome clicks louder on the first beat, and how the chord always changes right on that "1":
Counting is the crutch; feeling is walking. The final goal is not to count forever, but for the pulse to live in your body. Good musicians move with the music: they tap a foot, nod their head, sway their torso. It's not showing off: the body is a far steadier clock than thought.
Counting
Feeling
An exercise to check whether the pulse is yours yet: the drop-out metronome. Play four bars with the click, keep playing while you turn the metronome down for another four, then bring it back. If the click lines up with your strum when it returns, your internal clock held. If not, were you ahead or behind? It's nearly always ahead.
When we play we anticipate what's coming: the next chord, the hard bit, the ending. That anticipation, added to tension and excitement, pushes the hand ahead. Also, during rests and long notes our sense of time shrinks and we tend to "fill in" too early. Counting out loud, subdividing (saying "1 & 2 &") and breathing calmly are the classic antidotes.
Strum one downstroke on each beat on Em while counting "1, 2, 3, 4" out loud. Start at 60 BPM. When the click stays "hidden" inside your strum for 4 bars, go up 10 BPM.
Goal: Strum 4 bars of quarter notes with the click, without rushing, at 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 BPM.
Over this backing, strum quarter-note downstrokes and change chord right on beat 1 of each bar. Turn on Click to hear the pulse. If a change arrives late, lift the fingers of the previous chord on beat 4: it's better for an open string to ring than to lose the pulse.
Goal: Play the progression 4 times in a row without stopping your hand or delaying a change, at 70 BPM.
Play quarter notes on Am. Four bars with the click, four bars with the volume all the way down (keep counting out loud), four with the click again. Repeat the cycle three times and note whether you were ahead, behind or in time when it came back.
Goal: After 4 bars without the click, land back with it when the volume returns.
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