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Table of Contents
Purpose
Playing with a metronome or drum machine helps you develop better timing and rhythm. Without a time-keeping device, it's hard to know if you're keeping a steady rhythm, especially for beginners. When learning music, your mind is already busy, and assessing your timing can be difficult.
If you find yourself struggling with a metronome, drum machine, or ensemble, stop playing and listen to what's happening around you. Here are some tips for playing along with a rhythm:
- Listen. Focus on the beat and try to imagine how your playing will fit in.
- Be Quiet. If you can't hear the beat while playing, don't immediately turn up the volume—try playing more quietly instead.
- Anticipate. Predict when the beat will happen. Ideally, your sound should overlap perfectly with the beat, as if your instrument triggers it.
- Feel It. Rhythm should be felt, not intellectualized. Tap your foot, move your head, or sway your body. Align your movement with the beat.
Practice without a time-keeping device when learning a new piece to allow your brain to understand it without feeling rushed.
Tempo
Adjust the tempo by:
- Dragging the tempo wheel.
- Clicking/tapping the tempo and entering a new value.
- Using keyboard input.
- Using left/right arrow keys.
Fast Tempos: Start slow, play smoothly, then gradually increase the tempo. Avoid practicing mistakes by staying at a manageable speed.
Slow Tempos: Practicing slowly helps you understand what you're playing. It allows you to focus on details, making fast tempos easier later.
Time Signature
Time signatures tell you how many beates are in each measure and which note value gets the beat. Common time signatures include 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8, but there are many more to explore. Practicing less common time signatures helps you develop a stronger sense of rhythm and phrasing.
Playing in different time signatures also helps you practice other musical concepts like tuplets as well. For instance, a standard 6/8 beat feels similar to triplets in a 4/4 backbeat—both involve playing in divisions of three. This understanding lets you transpose your practice to different musical contexts. Getting comfortable with triplets is also a great way to start feeling dotted notes as well.
The more you practice different rhythmic groupings, the more versatile you become as musician. This allows you greater freedom to express yourself confidently in any musical situation.
Feel
When subdividing a beat, the most common subdivisions are eighth notes and sixteenth notes. An eighth note divides a quarter note into two equal parts, while a sixteenth note divides it into four equal parts. You can also think of a sixteenth note as splitting an eighth note in half. The "feel" determines how evenly or unevenly subdivisions are placed.
- Straight: A straight feel divides each beat evenly, so each note is spaced equally in time.
- Shuffle: A shuffle feel is an uneven subdivision of a beat, where the second note is delayed. In this app, shuffles are processed as divisions of three, which is the most common and easy-to-understand shuffle. In a typical shuffle, the first note is played as usual, and the second note is delayed to fall on the third part of a triplet. Usually, a shuffle is only applied to the highest subdivision in a beat.
Shuffles can be applied to different subdivisions of the beat:
- Eighth note shuffle: The quarter notes are played evenly, while the eighth notes are shuffled.
- Sixteenth note shuffle: Both the quarter and eighth notes are played evenly, while only the sixteenth notes are shuffled.
Practicing with a shuffled beat can be more challenging than practicing with a straight beat because each note requires you to reassess the timing, in addition to the uneven timing, giving you less time to reach the next note. Practicing with a straight beat is also challenging, but the focus there is on maintaining even timing throughout.
Beats
Different types of beats are often iconic to specific genres, helping define the music's energy and momentum. A drum beat gets its identity from the commonly accepted rhythmic placements of key drums over the course of a measure or multiple measures.
It's important to understand the qualities that make each beat genre-specific, practicing all types of beats helps build a strong sense of rhythmic independence. The more you expose yourself to different beat patterns, the better you become at maintaining your own timing and the more options you can develop to use in your musical vocabulary.
Intelligent beats: The multi-colored "+" beats in this app are multi-measure beats that randomize fills which can help keep practice from feeling too monotonous or repetitive. Jamming along with these types of beats can help develop a sense of comfort playing with the same type of unpredictability you might come across playing along with a real drummer.
Steady
The "steady" is an ostinato or repeating pattern and the drum kit piece used to play it in order to create a variety of momentums and energies. Mix and match different steady patterns with different drum beat patterns for truly unique practice sessions! Beats that load with a "Pre-defined" option have a unique pattern which is exclusive to that beat!
Kit
Press the drum kit button to change the drum samples being played. Depending on the genre of music you're playing, the right kit can make your practice session feel more authentic. Experiment and see what you like.
Configure
By pressing the Configure button, you can access a simple mixer window.
Playback Issues
- Silent Mode: This application uses Web Audio API. If you encounter issues with sound playback on your device, it may be due to "Silent Mode" being enabled on your device. Toggle the mute switch or Silent Mode settings on your device to resolve.
- Volume Down: Make sure the volume is up on your device!
- Bad Sound: If playback on your device sounds garbled or distorted, try clearing your sound cache here:
- Play Button frozen: Reload the page by pressing the reload button on your browser or the reload button toward the bottom of the app.
Keyboard Shortcuts
- Spacebar: Play/Stop
- Left Arrow: Decrease tempo
- Right Arrow: Increase tempo
- 0-9: Begin entering new tempo
- Enter: Apply entered tempo
- T: Select time-signature
- B: Select beat
- F: Select feel
- S: Select steady
- I: Select steady instrument
- H: Help
About
This application was developed by Josh Hanchar for private and educational use. Visit hanch.net for more.