Using a Metronome For Riffs

[Isaac Moss]

Hey I was wondering if I could get some help on how to use a Metronome to practice a certain riff. Okay so I’ve been practicing the main riff of Hail To The King since late December and I’ve been using an app to slow it down and practice it on loop, I managed to get it up to 92 percent speed but the other day my iPad, which is what I was using to practice the riff with broke. So I can’t use the app to practice it and it’s bumming me out because I don’t know how to use a Metronome with it. Some parts are slightly faster than others and changes rhythm pretty often so I don’t think you could just count four notes per click or something like that. It’s the same for riffs like the intro on Master Of Puppets, I just don’t know how you would count it or set the clicks and stuff. If anyone could help me it would be appreciated.

 

[Ed Seith]

Metronome is intended to keep general pace, not to be an indicator for every note. For instance, Master of Puppets is played at 210bpm. Set your metronome for 210 bpm, and you will have roughly 2 notes for every count. If you listen to the metronome alongside the recording, you’ll hear how the notes should fit in the tempo of the metronome.
There are a lot of videos on youtube explaining how to use a metronome to practice playing 1, 2, 3, or 4 notes per beat. There are more variations, but those are the most common. It sounds like you could also use a crash course in reading note lengths in music or tab notation. This is a good starter:
https://www.essential-music-theory.com/music-note.html

 

[Isaac Moss]

Thanks for the info man I’ll check out that link