ToneToolkit

Free Online Metronome

Keep time with an adjustable, accented click.

Everything runs in your browser. No audio is ever uploaded.

120BPM

Settings

In 6, 9 and 12 beats the accent falls on every third beat, the way compound meters are counted.

Practice

The tempo climbs by the step every time that many bars go by, and holds once it reaches the target. Changing the tempo by hand restarts the climb from there.

The beat indicator keeps running through the muted bars, so you can practice holding the tempo through silence and hear whether you are still in time when the click returns.

Audio starts on your first tap on Play, as required by your browser. Press Space to start or stop.

A metronome gives you a steady click to play against, and the moment you play with one you find out where your time actually sits. This free online metronome runs from 20 to 300 BPM with tap tempo, 1 to 12 beats per bar, eighth, triplet and sixteenth subdivisions, three click sounds, a tempo trainer that speeds up while it runs, and a gap click that mutes whole bars so you have to hold the tempo on your own.

How to use it

  1. Set the tempo with the slider or the number box, anywhere from 20 to 300 BPM. If you know how the piece feels but not the number, press Tap tempo in time with it four or five times and the counter beside the button shows how many taps went into the estimate.
  2. Choose beats per bar, from 1 to 12, and leave the accent on the first beat switched on so you can hear where each bar starts. At 6, 9 and 12 beats the accent lands on every third beat, which is how compound meters such as 6/8 and 12/8 are counted.
  3. Pick a subdivision. None gives plain quarter notes, while eighths, triplets and sixteenths fill in quieter clicks between the main beats so you can place the notes in between with the same care as the beats themselves.
  4. Choose a click sound. The beep is the most cutting, the wood block sits well under an acoustic instrument, and the clave carries through a loud room. If you keep losing the click behind your own playing, changing the sound helps more than turning it up.
  5. Open the Practice box and switch on the tempo trainer to make the click speed up as you go: choose how many BPM to add each time (1 to 10), how many bars go by between rises (1 to 8), and a target tempo where the climb stops. Nudging the tempo by hand restarts the climb from wherever you left it.
  6. Switch on the gap click to practice through silence: set how many bars play and how many stay muted, from 1 to 8 each. The beat dots keep flashing through the gap, so when the click comes back you hear immediately whether you drifted. Press Start, or use the space bar, and Copy link shares your tempo, beats per bar and subdivision.

What you can use it for

Bringing a passage up to speed. Set the trainer to add 2 BPM every four bars with a target you cannot quite play yet, then loop the passage. The rise is small enough that you barely notice it and steep enough that ten minutes of looping covers real ground.

Finding out whether you rush or drag. Turn on the gap click with two bars playing and two muted. Rushing shows up as the click arriving late, dragging as the click arriving early, and both are obvious the first time you try it.

Learning odd meters. Set beats per bar to 5 for 5/4, 7 for 7/8 or 9 for 9/8, and let the accent mark the downbeat until the pattern stops feeling like a series of dropped beats.

Working on the notes between the beats. Sixteenths make scale and arpeggio work honest, and triplets are the fastest way to stop a shuffle from flattening out into straight eighths.

Keeping a rehearsal or a recording together. A shared click on a laptop settles arguments about tempo faster than any discussion, and it gives a scratch take something to align to later.

Italian tempo markings and their BPM ranges

MarkingBPMHow it feels
Largo40 to 60Broad and slow. Slow enough that you have to count the subdivisions to hold it steady.
Adagio66 to 76Slow and unhurried, roughly a resting heartbeat, common in second movements.
Andante76 to 108Walking pace, which is what the word means. A comfortable default for learning something new.
Moderato108 to 120Moderate. Most pop and rock sits at or just above the top of this range.
Allegro120 to 156Fast and bright. Dance music clusters around 120 to 130 BPM.
Presto168 to 200Very fast. Above about 200 BPM most players count in half bars instead.

Accuracy and limits

The clicks are scheduled ahead of time on the audio clock, so the sound itself is accurate. The flashing dots are drawn on the browser's animation frames and can lag the sound by a frame or two, especially on a busy page. Trust your ears, not the dots.

Wireless output adds delay. Bluetooth headphones and speakers push everything back by tens of milliseconds. The offset is constant, so playing along still works, but a take recorded against a Bluetooth click will sit noticeably late. Use wired output when timing has to line up with a recording.

Tap tempo is only as steady as your tapping, and it averages several taps rather than trusting any one of them. Give it four or five taps in a row, and tap again from scratch rather than trying to correct a reading you do not like.

Frequently asked questions

What BPM should I practice at?

Slow enough to play the passage cleanly every single time, which is usually slower than feels dignified. Once five repeats in a row are clean, raise the tempo by about 5 percent. The tempo trainer automates exactly that loop.

What is a good metronome tempo for a beginner?

Somewhere between 60 and 80 BPM. That is slow enough to think between beats and fast enough that the pulse still feels like music rather than a series of unrelated clicks.

How does the tempo trainer work?

It counts bars while it runs. Every time your chosen number of bars goes by, it adds your chosen number of BPM, and it stops climbing when it reaches the target tempo. Moving the tempo by hand resets the count and the climb continues from the new tempo.

What is a gap click for?

It mutes whole bars so that you have to keep the tempo yourself, then brings the click back so you can hear how far you drifted. It is the closest thing to a test of your internal clock, and it exposes problems that playing along with a constant click hides.

Can I use this for 6/8 or 7/8?

Yes. Set beats per bar to the top number of the signature: 6 for 6/8, 7 for 7/8, 5 for 5/4. At 6, 9 and 12 beats the accent automatically falls on every third beat, which matches how compound meters are counted. For 7/8 you get one accent per bar, so count the grouping yourself.

Is this metronome accurate, and does it work offline?

The timing comes from the browser's audio clock rather than a page timer, so the beat does not drift even if the tab is busy. The page also works offline once you have loaded it, because nothing here needs a server.

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