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Ultimate Metronome Exercise: NEW Guitar Practice Tips for How to use a Metronome

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The ultimate metronome exercise is a NEW approach to practicing your guitar! Using the best virtual metronome, you learn how to develop your guitar exercises well beyond the conventional way of using a metronome. The secret is to play to the click on the UP beat, NOT the usual down beat!

You know how you would ordinarily set your metronome to click on the DOWN beat of every quarter note? Well, using the "ultimate metronome exercise", we will be doing just the OPPOSITE!

This "upside-down" method of using the metronome reproduces the way the drums "feel" in songs that use fast punk or metal beats in double time. Only all you hear is the "snare drum."

This is MUCH trickier than it sounds! So let's start SLOOOW.

The best virtual metronome that you can use free online is linked below. It will open a new window for your convenience: Metronome Online.com.

Part 1: Beginning the Ultimate Metronome Exercise: 60-80 BPM

Let's start with a simple chord progression that you often hear in "diner rock" from the nineteen-seventies and in films such as Grease. First, set your metronome to 60 BPM. Then review your 'C', 'Am', 'F', and 'G' chords. Finally, play the following chord progression (also known as the I-vi-IV-V7 progression):

Click tablature to enlarge:

The NORMAL way to play this progression to a metronome is where the CLICKS fall on beats '1-2-3-4'. But WE are playing it using the ultimate metronome exercise! -- so let's go back and put the clicks on the '&s', which are the "off-beats" or "up-beats" of each count.

Got it? GREAT!

Now work your way up until you can play this example up to 80 BPM, with your metronome clicking on the "up-beats", the '&' of each count!

Practice ALL your guitar exercises this way. Starting SLOW and working up by increments of 2 or 3 BPMs at a time.

Part 2: Amping It Up: 80-120 BPM

Feeling good about yourself? Let's up the dosage to a FASTER tempo range! The guitar riff will be slightly more challenging. But the concept is the same: play to the UP BEATS.

Ooga Booga says:

"As you do this "ultimate metronome exercise" more, you will notice a "shift" in the way it FEELS. It will feel different, but satisfyingly GOOD somehow! It will feel like you are unlocking a fresh new rhythmic environment. Almost like you are more "in the pocket" than ever before!"

The next example takes a regular power chord guitar riff and applies our "ultimate metronome exercise" concept. Learn the riff by playing it with your metronome the USUAL way. Then play it so that the clicks fall on the '&s' BETWEEN the beats!

Click tablature to enlarge:

Again, work your way up to the maximum BPM for this exercise: 120 BPM!

Part 3: Maximum Metronome Workout! 120-192

Want to learn how to play any song, at any speed, just by listening to it?

ARNOLD! says:

"ARL YOU READY FUR DE ULTIMATE METRONOME WORKOUT EVERL! THEN FOLLOW ME TO DE CHOPPERLL NOWWLL!"

This final example is a "metal" style riff that lends itself perfectly to our unusual metronome concept. Learn the riff WELL. Start at 120 BPM and work your way up! If you get lost in the frenzy, back it off a notch or two until you feel "locked on!"

Click tablature to enlarge:

Of the vast array of "guitar practice" tips you will find online, learning how to use a metronome -- and actually USING it! -- is arguably the most exponentially beneficial regimen you should ALWAYS include in your practice sessions.

Now that you know the "ultimate metronome exercise" concept, you can apply it to OTHER songs that you know! Practice this way for a few weeks and see how the "feel" starts to evolve. Many musicians are so used to using their metronome the orthodox way, that they find this method nearly impossible! Keep practicing, and you will be able to feel music in a way that is foreign to most performers!

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