Rhythm, timing & metronome exercises for guitar – Part 2

Part 2 of this post continues with suggestions and metronome exercises for your guitar practice. You can read part 1 here. This time, we will be more hands-on to answer your most pressing questions about how to practice with a metronome.

Want to try this while you read? Open our free online metronome in a new tab and practice along right in your browser.

Practicing scales

Practicing scales may not be the most loved exercise, but any professional guitar player will tell you that you need to spend some time with them in your daily practice to develop your musicality. Scales help develop your "vocabulary" and muscle memory.

In guitar, practicing scales usually involves connecting them across the neck, practicing alternate picking accuracy, and even legato. This can be challenging with a metronome because we tend to rush.

Exercises

Here is a quick exercise example for practicing scales on the guitar:

• Use a scale pattern that you know well and set the metronome to a comfortable speed where you can play quarter notes (one note per beat).
• Start at 80 BPM. Adjust according to your skill level. Every note should be clearly heard and executed on the beat. Focus on accuracy.
• Increase the metronome speed as you feel more comfortable with that tempo, in increments of 5-10 BPM.

Once you are comfortable playing one note per beat, repeat the exercise using eighth notes (two notes per beat). Increase the tempo as you ensure that you are playing two equally spaced notes per beat. You can apply the same method with sixteenth notes, triplets, and other beat subdivisions.

In summary, you can increase the speed of what you play in relation to the metronome by either increasing the BPM while maintaining the same beat subdivision or by keeping the same BPM and increasing the number of notes per beat.

Guitar practice with the Soundbrenner Core 2

Practicing chord transitions and right-hand rhythm

The previous approach is also valid for practicing chord transitions and your right-hand rhythms. You can practice chord transitions as follows:

• Pick two chords you know well so you don’t need to think about finger placement. Set the metronome to 80 BPM and change chords every 4 beats (adjust the BPM as necessary).
• Play each chord once without falling behind tempo; play exactly on the beat.
• Using the same BPM, play all four beats per measure before going to the next chord.
• Practice the same transition, but change chords every 2 beats. Once comfortable, change chords every beat. The metronome BPM should remain the same, though you can adjust it for more challenge.

This exercise aims to improve your chord transitions. You can introduce more chords into your exercises or focus on any chord you find difficult.

Practicing chord transitions and strumming

Strumming involves rhythmic patterns played over each chord. This means you will work on both chord transitions and strumming. Start with simple rhythms:

• For instance, play example 3 on each chord. Focus on a couple of chords first and work on each rhythm one at a time. If needed, practice your right-hand rhythm using only one chord.
• Once your rhythm is correct, apply it to your chords and practice with the metronome, gradually building up to the desired speed.

Maintain the same note subdivision or rhythmic relationship with the beat as you increase the metronome speed.

Learning songs to practice metronome exercises for guitar

A metronome is also useful for consistently playing a whole song at a given tempo. First, find the tempo of the song you are learning. You can press play on the song and tap to get a feel for the tempo. The Soundbrenner metronome app allows you to tap your tempo and figure out the BPM for future practice.

Set the metronome to the required tempo, determine the time signature, and configure it in the metronome. Take your time counting and feeling the tempo until you are accustomed to it while listening to the song.

Practice slow

When working on chords, licks, or riffs, if you feel overwhelmed or encounter demanding sections, don’t hesitate to slow down the metronome speed. I highly recommend this, as it helps you better perceive harmonic rhythm (when chords change), different rhythmic subdivisions, and which notes fall on which beats.

Once you’ve grasped that, start practicing using previous advice. Begin slowly and build up to the desired tempo, focusing on accuracy with beats and your playing. Avoid being sloppy just to play at the desired speed.

Consider dividing the song into smaller sections for practice. Focus on those parts instead of playing through the whole song repeatedly. Work from beginning to end until you get it right. For now, concentrate on whatever is hindering your fluidity in playing that piece. Use the guitar metronome exercises to assist in your practice sessions.

Exploring different beat subdivisions

I have mentioned playing with different subdivisions as a way to increase speed while maintaining the same BPM in your guitar metronome exercises. Here’s another example of practicing beat subdivisions while working on pick tremolos:

• Set your metronome to 80 BPM in a 4/4 time signature.
• Play eighth notes (two notes per beat) and accent every beat (play harder on your downstroke). Ensure you play two equally spaced notes, one on the downbeat and the other on the upbeat.
• Once comfortable with eighth notes, play triplets (three equally spaced notes in a beat) while maintaining the same tempo. The on-beat accent will occur every other time, on either the downstroke or upstroke.
• When moving to sixteenth notes, you will play four notes during a beat. Remember to accent every first beat, which will fall on downstrokes.

Practice with accents

You can apply these exercises to scales and accent every first beat of the subdivision you are working on. As you progress through different subdivisions, like quintuplets or septuplets, which are less common in your listening experience, it becomes increasingly challenging to subdivide the beat. Some people count numbers to fit them into each beat before picking up their instrument to get a feel for it.

Others may use syllables from words to help them feel the beat subdivisions. For example, you could use the word “met-ro-nome,” which has three syllables, to practice triplets. This word is convenient for counting triplets. You can explore other proper beat subdivision systems that use syllables, such as Konnakol. I won’t delve into this system here, but I encourage you to check it out.

Next time, I will present more exercises for your guitar practice with a metronome, focusing on building speed and other invaluable benefits of using a metronome throughout your musical development. Stay tuned.

About the author:

Pedro Murino Almeida is an award-winning composer with the musical project Follow No One, an expert musician, and an experienced music teacher. He maintains a blog called Beyond Music Theory to provide tools and instruction for beginning to advanced music students and those wishing to learn about music theory, improve their songwriting, and enhance their music production skills.