How To Use A Metronome with Guitar & Get FASTER Chord Changes

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. And in this lesson video, I'm going to go over how to use a metronome, but more specifically, how to use the metronome to help improve your speed, particularly your chord changes. I'm going to go over what I tell my students to do. So let's get into the video.

Now, some of you saw my video on the top three mistakes Beginner Guitar Players make, where I mentioned, hey, make sure you always practice with the metronome. And I had some people comment below saying, Lauren, well, how exactly do I use a metronome? Which led to me making this video to answer that question for you guys. So if you ever have a question, post it in the comments below and I'll try and answer it as best as possible. So this video is going to be broken down into three parts. One, basically, how to correctly use a metronome, especially if you want to apply it to stuff like chord changes to help you get faster to a really special trick that I use with students to trick your brain into thinking you're going faster. The third thing is we're going to talk about how you can use a metronome to apply to chord progressions for playing songs. Because obviously that's the fun part. Using metronome is not fun, but being able to play songs that you know and love is the fun part. So we always want to apply these non fun things to fun applications. So, so let's get started with number one. So number one, you need to have a metronome. I just have a phone. All right? This is a Google Pixel, I have an Android and I have the Metronome Beats app. I'm sure iPhone users that there is a metronome app out there that you can use. All you need is something that clicks four times. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. Okay, most things we're going to be working on are what we call four four time, meaning we count to four. All right? So you can hear that that was clicking very fast. So metronome, all it does is it keeps the time, it keeps the pulse for you. And for a lot of people, they're intimidated by this metronome because they don't know how to use it or they're scared of it. The great thing about a metronome is I don't know if you can see on my screen here, but there's a number on the screen and it just tells you how fast you're going. That's all. Think of it as like miles per hour in A car. Well, this is beats per. Per minute in music. And the great thing about these apps is that they go pretty slow. So when I start with students, we pick a speed that is very slow. So, for example, when I'm working with students and we're trying to work on chord changes. So say you're trying to work on a chord change, like E minor to D. Okay, I will time a student without the metronome first. And you can do this at home. Time. Time yourself for one minute and count how many times you change chords. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, so forth, and so on. And do that for a minute, and maybe you start off with 25. Perfect. That's the number. Now you're going to put in your metronome. Okay, so we're going to start off with 25. Now it's very slow. Two.

Three. Hey, guys, real quick, if you're enjoying this lesson video, don't forget to subscribe and turn your notifications on. This way. You see, when I release new videos just like this one, okay? So you can hear this click. I'm going to speed it up just a little bit. I'm going to go to 50 so that this video doesn't get drawn out. Essentially, what I tell students to do is get your number, set your metronome. Okay? So you're going to set your metronome, and you're going to start practicing. And I tell them, pick two chords. Two chords. Don't pick 50 chords. Pick two. In this example, I'm going to do E minor and D. So we have E minor, D major, E minor, D major. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get my fingers to move fast enough to keep up with the timing of the metronome. You hear that click, click, click, click, click. All right, so that is the absolute basic. And you can do this with scales, too. If you're doing finger exercises. 1.

So it doesn't just apply to chords. So that's what we do. We find our number, and then the goal is week by week to increase that number. So I would start at 50. I wouldn't go from 50 to 70. That's too big of a jump. What I tell students to do is bump it up by like, two or three beats per minute, maybe five max, and then try it again. Okay. And then you do your chords. E minor D. E minor D. E minor D. Okay, you would do that back and forth again and again, and eventually you're going to get to a Point where you can't go any faster. I'm just going to bump this up to 70 just to give you. So say I'm playing at 70 and this is my plateau point. I'm, like, all over the place. I feel like I'm rushing. I can't get any further. What I want you to do is this is going to bring us into tip number two. It's my top secret tip that I use with students to get them to play chords faster. Eventually, you get to a plateau point where you can't go any faster one, because your fingers aren't relaxed enough. Tension really slows down a lot of students. So what I tell them to do. So if 70 is your max, I say, great, well, we're going to play at 80. And they're like, warm. Why are we playing at 80? I couldn't even play at 70. I'm like, well, let's just do it. So now it's super fast, right? And I tell them, I don't care what the chords sound like. They can sound like this for all I care. Just try and get those fingers moving. And this is what we do. We'll go back and forth as fast as we can. And if you can only do 70, 80 might seem like supersonic speed. All right? And then when I tell the students do after we do that for a little bit, and they're like, okay, this is way too fast, I say, fine, let's go back to 70. Now, I've just reprogrammed your brain to think that 70 is slow and 80 is fast. And sometimes not 100% of the time, but most of the time, students go back to 70, and they're like, this is so much easier now because they just experienced 80, and they tried as best they could to keep up, and they probably failed. And in guitar, it's a very important thing. Failure is not a bad thing. Making mistakes is not a bad thing. But when you want to get faster, particularly with chord changes, you have to train for speed. And to do that, we have to sacrifice sometimes the cleanliness of the chords. So I tell people when they're doing tip number two, as long as the fingers are mostly getting in the right spot, that's good. Okay? If they're muting, that's okay. The goal is speed. And then what we'll do is we'll move on to tip number three. So, one, we've gotten the metronome. We've synced our body up with it. We're working on a chord change. E minor to D okay, we've gotten that to as fast as we can and then we've gone to step number two, which is we've really pushed ourselves to try and go super fast. And then what we do is we slow it down. So say your max was 60, I go back down to something like 50 and I say, okay, great. What we're going to do now is we're going to put this in some sort of chord progression. So say we're going to do, I don't know, G E minor D. Okay. G, E minor D. And I won't have them put a strumming pattern to it yet. But what we would do is we'd play 50. So we're at a comfortable speed now because we're doing something different. We're adding chords in. So now we're at a comfortable speed. 2, 3, 4. And I would say G E minor D. G E minor D again. G E minor D One more time. G E minor D. And once you do that and that feels pretty comfortable, I wouldn't increase the speed, I would throw a strumming pattern under it. Alright, so your strumming pattern could be something simple like 1, 2 and 3, 4. 1, 2 and 3, 4 dot 1, 2 and 3, 4. So I guess this is of kind, kind of like step four in the process. Okay, so we put our metronome back on and again we're at 50. So hopefully that's a pretty comfortable speed for this E minor to D change and this G change and all of that. So we're going to go two, three, four. And one, two and three, four. See how we're lined up with the metronome. Two and three, four. Working on timing. One, two and three, four. 1, 2 and 3, 4. 1, 2 and three, four. One more time. 1, 2 and 3, four. And that might be too fast for you. Maybe one of your chord changes isn't as fast as the other. So maybe you just leave off that last strum and you go 1, 2 and 3, 4. And on the click 3, you use that click to change chords like this. 2, 3, 4. 1, 2 and 3. Switch 4. 1, 2 and 3 dot Switch 4. And 1, 2 and 3. And switch them 1, 2 and 3. So you can see how letting the metronome guide my timing and my rhythm. Alright. And if my chords aren't fast enough, I'm going to adjust the strumming pattern to make it so that I can stay in time with this metronome. And eventually, if you keep going back to step two, pushing yourself to go A little bit faster. Eventually your chord changes are going to start speeding up. And don't forget to breathe. When you're doing these cord change exercises and trying to get your cords faster, don't forget to breathe. Because if you're not breathing, it builds tension. And tension always slows us down. So make sure you're staying relaxed. And if you were doing a chord progression, say you were doing that G, E minor, D, I would work on G to E minor. Okay? Just those two chords, G to E minor, then the E minor to D, just like we did, and then D to G, because those are all the chord changes you would need to play this chord chord progression. And this is what I do, my students, and this is how we work with a metronome. I tell all my students in the first lesson, get yourself a metronome. Because the metronome is going to tell you how much progress you're making from week to week. And it's also going to push you to go faster. So when you think you can't go any faster, it's like working with a personal trainer, if you've ever worked with one, and they say, give me 10 pushups and you get to 10, and they say, give me 10 more or give me, you know, five more or whatever, then that's what the metronome is doing. It's saying 60 beats per minute is way too fast. All right, well, let's try it at 70. Let's push. Let's try and get to 70. And if we don't, that's okay, because maybe, maybe by trying to get to 70, you got to 65 and you broke through your plateau and you can keep making progress. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video on how to use a metronome. If you guys found this lesson useful, make sure to like below. 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