This swing metronome provides a way of hearing and feeling the difference that swinging eighth notes make to rhythm. The widget is operated either by dragging sliders and clicking buttons using your mouse or more quickly from your computer keyboard. It allow you to hear both straight and swung rhythms together. You don’t have to stop the click to change between them, making it easier to train your ear to recognize various swing feels.
First of all, hit big Start button in the top left-hand corner. This will start your click at the next beat after it’s pressed. To pause, hit the button again or if the widget has focus, you can also use the space bar to toggle play/pause.
How to Use the Swing Metronome
The section underneath controls is a timeline. Each beat is marked with a dark dot for the down beat and a teal marker for off beats. There’s also a play head that moves along the timeline so you know exactly what part of the bar you’re on.
So what is it? The single control is the Swing ratio slider. This sets how late into the beat the off beat will be. So if you set it to 50 then you get a straight eight. Increasing the number pushes the offbeat later in the beat, giving it more of a swing feel. You can put the slider anywhere from 50… 80, just grab the slider and pull to wherever you like. There is also four preset buttons that will snap you to common feels immediately. The 50 is straight even eighth notes. The 58 is called light as it has a slight swing. The 67 is a triplet which is the classic jazz feel based on triplets. The 75 is hard as this is a pretty strong shuffle feel.
Next, the Straight and Swung buttons lets you A/B compare the rhythm. They’re located beside the Start button. When you click one it will flip the feel but not stop the metronome running. You can be on Swung and click Straight which swaps to even eighth notes. Clicking Swung again reverts back to whatever your currently set slider value is. This allows you to hear the comparison of the two feels on the same groove. It is the quickest way to get a handle on the effect of swing ratio on timing.
The BPM slider controls speed, as do the plus and minus buttons. The tempo vary from 40 to 240 beats per minute. To alter the beat count (from two to seven), use the Beats per bar control. This alters both the accent pattern and the look of the visual timeline. Lastly, the Bars shown control determines if you see one or two bars in your timeline.
With the accent and mute controls you can fine tune the sound. The Accent 1 button places a louder, higher pitched click on first beat of every bar. That way you have an idea where the down beat is. You then have the option to isolate individual layers using the Mute down and Mute off buttons. If you mute the down beats, then you are able to concentrate fully on the off beat timing. If you want to practise only playing on the down beats, then mute the off beats. There is also a dedicated slider for the off beat volume. Overall loudness is controlled by the Master volume slider.
While the click is running, you can easly change settings using keyboard shortcuts. First give the widget focus by clicking anywhere inside of it. To begin/stop, hit space. To switch from Swung to Straight or vice versa, press A. To change the swing ratio, use the up/down arrow keys. To mute the down beats, hit D; to mute the off beats, hit M. To reset all controls back to default, press R. To enter fullscreen mode, press F. To display/hide the help panel, hit H. Use tab to move focus between controls, then either Space or Enter to activate the currently focused button.
Begin on the metronome with a swing ratio of 67. Every couple of bars, tap on the Straight button to listen to the change. As you increase the ratio, notice that the off beat slides further back in the beat.
At faster tempos real musicians frequently swing less. Set the swing to 67 and play along at 120 BPM. Then, set it to 58 to play at a faster 220 BPM. A light swing sounds more natural at higher speed.
If you’re learning to internalize this rhythm, use the mute controls to remove the off beats so you can concentrate on the down beats. Play around with various swing ratios and tempos. You can see how the off beat is moving along the visual timeline. The dotted circle indicates where it should of be for the other feel. That’s the visual reinforcement of what you hear.
If you want to try again, reset the widget, which sets everything back to the defaults. In fullscreen mode, you have a bit more room so you can clearly see the timeline.
Spend some time tinkering with the controls until you discover a feel that fits the music you’re working on. Begin clicking and listen as you work out your sense of swing.