How to play
A practice metronome rather than a game. Set a tempo and a time signature, press Start, and it clicks steadily with a higher pitch on the first beat of each bar. A swinging arm and a row of dots show where you are in the bar.
- Start and Stop — the single button below the presets toggles the click on and off.
- BPM slider — drags the tempo anywhere from 40 to 240 beats per minute. The large number above updates as you move it.
- Tempo presets — Largo 60, Adagio 80, Moderato 120, Allegro 140 and Presto 180 jump straight to those tempos.
- Time signature buttons — 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and 6/8 set how many beats fall between accents, and rebuild the row of dots to match.
Scoring
Nothing is scored or counted. The click is an 80 millisecond sine tone, at 880 Hz and slightly louder on the downbeat and 660 Hz on the other beats. The gap between beats is 60000 divided by the tempo in milliseconds, so 120 BPM gives a click every 500 milliseconds. The pendulum arm alternates between plus and minus 25 degrees on each beat, completing a full swing every two beats. Changing tempo or signature while running restarts the count from beat one.
Tips
- Any change to tempo or signature restarts the bar, so make your adjustments before you start playing rather than mid-phrase.
- For 6/8, the 6 setting accents only the first of the six, so if you want the usual two-group feel you will need to hear the second group yourself.
- Practising a difficult passage slowly at 60 to 80 and stepping the slider up in small increments works better than jumping to the target tempo.
Frequently asked questions
Can I set a tempo the slider will not reach?
No. The range is fixed at 40 to 240 BPM, which covers Largo through Presto.
Why does the arm swing at half speed?
It flips direction once per beat, so a complete left-to-right-and-back swing takes two beats. That matches how a real pendulum metronome moves.
Can I play this on a phone?
Yes — on a touch screen the game shows on-screen buttons, and games played with a mouse work by tapping.