 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MusicTeacher.com and in this video we're going to talk about how to introduce a metronome into your practice sessions. All the tones you're going to hear in this video are coming from my Shergold Provocateur which is plugged into the Blackstar HD20 Mark II which I've got currently running on the Drive channel. So in this video we're going to talk a little bit about practice and why a metronome is a very important and very essential addition to your practice sessions. So first of all let's address what a metronome is. So a metronome is a tool that we can use for practice. So in this video I'm going to be talking about a metronome on my phone which I'm going to be using via an app but you can use metronomes in all different capacities. You can get a metronome built into your DAW if you record your guitar at home. There are a bunch of free ones on different websites online and you can get standalone metronomes as well. So this metronome I'm using today as I mentioned is an app on my smartphone. So this is an iPhone version of a metronome you can obviously get multiple different apps across iPhone and Android and all other devices as well. The goal of a metronome is to keep us in time when we're playing. So this metronome currently has a number here which is number 60. This is the beats per minute. So if I was to leave this metronome run that is the number of beats you would hear in an entire minute. So an easy way to think of 60 beats per minute is that's one beat every single second. If I was to increase that number so if I was to take this 60 and put it up to 128 that means I've got more than 60 beats per minute which means there's going to be more than one beat per second. Now if I go back to 120 beats per minute 120 is double 60 so that's two beats every second. So that's going to sound like this. So the job of a metronome is to give you a consistent pulse. That pulse is what we lock in to think of this like a drummer. When a drummer plays they're locked into a beat they're locked into time not to drift away from what they're playing to. All tracks tend to have a solid pulse of some sort. Many drummers and many musicians will choose to record to a metronome which you may also hear referred to as a click. Some drummers may not choose to use a metronome or click but they're still following the same basic principle. So when we play to a drummer we're essentially playing to this sort of thing. There's a pulse and a solid beat that we're locking into. Now why would you use this when you're practicing? So really the goal of the metronome is to number one train your sense of timing but also it can help you develop. So if there are things that you're working on or things that you're stuck on you can use a metronome to slow those things down and then gradually speed them up as you improve. The metronome can be great for setting goals and also training yourself to get better and more technically adept at something on the guitar. So let's talk about an example. So let's say I'm playing a very simple four finger exercise. So I'm starting at the fifth fret on the low E string and I'm going to play the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth frets with four independent fingers and then I'm going to keep that going up the strings. I can practice this exercise with a metronome to help me get faster at it but also to make sure that I'm playing it in time. It also helps me work on different subdivisions of beats. The easiest way to practice with a metronome is to set it at a comfortable tempo whatever that tempo is going to be for you and play one note on every single click. So if I was to do that same exercise my metronome is currently set to 120. It's going to sound like this. Now over time I could increase that speed. So now I'm going to put my metronome up to 160 beats per minute. I'm going to do the same exercise. So I could use that as a speed building tool if I was comfortable at playing this at 120 but I couldn't play it at 140 let's say. I could use this to help me build speed. So if I know that 120 is my comfortable speed I can start off with that speed. Once I'm really comfortable with it I can then increase the tempo of the metronome by five or ten BPM. I like to work in groups of five or ten because you don't really feel the difference between one or two beats per minute but five and ten is a nice increase and you'll actually start to feel the difference. Once you then start working at that same exercise 10 beats per minute faster you should start to feel a little bit of a pull. This is completely normal and what you're going to do then is you're going to keep working at it at that tempo until that now becomes your comfortable level and then as you can imagine you'll then continue to go up in five or ten BPM increments until you hit whatever your target speed is going to be. Now naturally you're going to come to a point where maybe you can't quite hit your target speed on the first day. Don't worry about that just keep going. The best way I like to teach people to practice on the metronome is to have your target goal in mind so let's say 160 is my target for this. I want to play that exercise at 160 BPM but I can only currently play it at 120. So I would practice that at 120 until I can play it very very clean without any problems without any dead notes or string buzz. Then I'm going to go to 130. Then I'm going to keep practicing in at 130. I might feel a slight pull but I might be able to do it so I'm going to keep pushing at 130 and then that's going to feel quite normal after 10 or 15 minutes. Then I'm going to go to 140. Now on my first day of practice 140 might be my limit so maybe at 140 I just can't get the exercise to work and that's okay that's the end of my practice session for today. The next day I'm going to start again back at 120 even though we already know we can do it at 120 we always want to start from our comfortable level. This is because this is our sort of neutral level and this is where we know we can always play it. The same thing then go up to 130, 140 you'll find your ceiling again. Keep going you may not break the ceiling that's fine. The next day let's try it again back to 120, 130, 140 on the third day. Now we can start to feel that ceiling moving a little bit and this sort of feels a little bit more natural now but maybe we still can't quite break it. That's okay the next day then let's say we're on day four now 120, 130, 140 all of a sudden we're up to 150 so we've broken through the ceiling so that alone shows us progress so we can keep going back to our comfortable level working up every single day pushing against our natural ceiling as a player. Eventually we're going to break through that ceiling to that next tempo marker. We're going to keep doing that until we hit our target speed. Now this is not just inclusive to speed building exercises we can use metronomes to work on chord changes. So if there's a chord change you really need to speed up for a song but you can't quite get your fingers in place set the metronome at a really slow tempo. I'm going to set my metronome for 60 bpm and I'm going to play the two chords that I'm stuck on which is a G to a C. I'm going to do one chord per beat so I'm going to play G on one beat C on the next beat and then when I start to get comfortable at that tempo I'm going to work up further. You can see how this is a great way to build speed and dexterity with things. We can also use this as a way to keep in time so whatever your favorite riffs are work up what the tempo of that riff is by checking out your favorite tabs online or your favorite transcriptions and then set your metronome to that tempo. Think of the metronome like a drummer you're going to try and lock in with that so play all your favorite riffs and licks to a metronome imagining that a drummer is playing them. This is a great way to just tighten up your overall sense of timing and rhythm and it really makes you focus on getting all of your parts on the beat. The metronome is a very very important part of your guitar playing and it's such a useful tool to bring into your practice routine. Like I said it's great for speed building, technique building, chord changes and overall timing sensibilities. I personally practice the metronome all the time and since I started doing that I've really noticed big improvements in my playing and I would recommend anyone else out there give it a try as well. Let me know down below in the comments what your favorite metronome exercises are because you can pretty much practice any guitar exercise to a metronome. I'd love to hear what you guys are practicing to your metronomes. Don't forget to check out Blackstar Amplification on YouTube for more free video lessons just like this and if you're looking for a music teacher in your local area please head to musicteacher.com check out the Music Teacher Database. This is full of teachers all around the country waiting to help you guys out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon.