To sharpen your feel for time inside yourself, there’s this thing called The Gap Click Trainer, which is a metronome practice. It will play a click steadily for several measures and then stop. Your job is to maintain pulse internally through silent section and hit screen at point where the click ought to resume. You can do it using your computer keyboard (which makes it quicker) or a mouse or trackpad.
At top of interface there’s a visual timeline of your progress. The solid blocks indicates the measures when the click can be heard and dashed ones are the silences between them. Your position in cycle is indicated by a moving playhead. Keep an eye out for badge in the top left-hand corner. This informs you if you’re in the silent phase of the cycle or not and the big number alongside it tick down the number of bars left in that phase.
How to Use the Gap Click Trainer
The central big button go solid when it’s time for silence to start. Then, as soon as you hear first beat of next measure, tap that button. It’ll compare your tap against real-time measurement and tell you in milliseconds what was too slow or too fast. If you dragged, the needle on the gauge will swing right; if you rushed, it’ll swing left.
Below, your results gets added to history chart so you can see any patterns in your timing.
The parameters for the exercise are completely under your control. The tempo slider let you select a slow practice tempo all the way through to a fast performing speed. Use the time signature and beats per bar steppers to switch between common 4/4 time and more complex meters like 7/8. Bars on and bars off controls how long the click section is compared to silent gap. A good place to start is equal bars, say two bars each to gain some confidence.
There are two toggle switches that changes difficulty of the exercise. One lets you hear an accent on beat one so it sounds brighter and louder on the downbeat (this can help orient you as cycle repeats). There’s also an option to keep a subtle animation running even when sound stops, but you can turn it off for harder challenge. In that case, visual playhead will freeze when the visual pulse is turned off. Making for a harder challenge since then you have to completely rely on your internal clock.
There are also some keyboard shortcuts for adjusting settings while keeping your hands on desk. Hold space bar to start and stop cycle; nudge tempo up/down in small increments with arrow keys. Tap T key for tap function (useful when you want to maintain your hands in center of the keyboard). Pressing R reset all settings back to default. Use A to toggle the downbeat accent and P to toggle visual pulse.
It’s also possible to change how many silent bars there are using the keyboard. The period and comma keys alter amount of bars that sound while bracket keys add or subtract from gap length. Pressing number keys 2-9 alters the number of beats in each bar. Using these shortcuts allow you to change exercise as you go. If you find yourself always hitting close to target (within thirty milliseconds) then try extending the gap length.
After every session, review plot of that history. You can see all your last 16 entries in the plot. The bars above the middle line indicates you went early; bars below indicate you were late. You can tell if you have a systematic tendency to rush or drag by whether you consistantly lean one way or the other. To counter this, change your counting strategy accordingly. Counting subdivisions like eighth notes during the gap can help players who tend to drag.
Clicking the help panel reveals additional details on audio latency compensation and timing conventions. It also puts the controls and timeline into full screen mode where you have more screen space to work with without distractions. This is good for those using it on a small laptop display or when you just need to concentrate on visual clues.
Begin slowly and comfortabley, leaving an interval. Aim to hit that green spot on the accuracy meter. When solid, lengthen the pause or quicken pace. Continue until you can feel the beat without any visual/auditory clues. Regular practice builds an accurate internal clock.
You should of turned on the trainer, close your eyes… now go.
• Tap the button or use the T key to tap