How to use a metronome and tune a guitar or ukulele

Start a new piece at about half its real tempo. Raise the BPM only when you can play the whole piece through without a mistake.

Move up about 5 BPM at a time. If you miss twice after a bump, step back one notch. Playing cleanly at a slow tempo lasts longer than playing sloppily at a fast one.

Picking beats per bar

Use 4 beats for 4/4 and 3 for a waltz. This app lets you set 1 to 12 beats, and only beat one plays the higher click. Listen for it and you always know where the bar comes back around.

Tempo terms

If the score says Andante or Allegro, it means roughly this: Largo is 40 to 60, Adagio is 66 to 76, Andante is 76 to 108, Moderato is 108 to 120, Allegro is 120 to 156, and Presto is 168 and up. The tempo term line on screen shows the word that fits your current BPM.

If you do not know the tempo of a song you are hearing, press Tap tempo along with it. Two taps or more are enough, and the BPM is the average gap between your taps.

Only the last six gaps count, and a pause longer than 2 seconds starts the count over. About eight taps is where the number settles.

Strings are listed from the thickest to the thinnest. The reference is equal temperament with A4 at 440 Hz.

Guitar

Standard tuning is E2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4. Drop D lowers only the thickest string a whole step to D2. Half step down lowers all six strings by a semitone.

Ukulele

Standard for soprano, concert and tenor ukuleles is G4 C4 E4 A4. The fourth string G sitting higher than C is correct. Baritone is D3 G3 B3 E4, the same as the top four guitar strings.

Pluck one string at a time in a quiet room. Strummed chords blend into one sound the tuner cannot read. The first moment after a pluck is unstable, so let it ring a second or two.

When the needle sits within 5 cents of center, the string is in tune. Always tune up to the note from below. If you come down from above the string slips and goes flat again soon.

If you would rather not use the mic, press a string button to hear the reference tone and tune by ear. The string is in tune when the two sounds stop beating against each other.

From here on, this is what the app actually does.

Metronome

Tempo runs from 20 to 300 BPM and beats per bar from 1 to 12. Beats are scheduled ahead on the audio clock, so the click stays steady even when the screen stalls for a moment.

Tuner

The mic audio is analyzed on this device to show the closest string and how many cents off you are. It is not recorded, stored or sent. Once a frame is analyzed it is thrown away.

Today's practice card

The card is built from what you really did this time: strings tuned, minutes of metronome, and the current BPM. If you did nothing yet, there is no card to make. A friend who opens the link on the card lands on the same BPM and beats.