★ Two Free Metronomes for Guitar Practice

Practicing the guitar to a metronome is one of the most important habits a guitarist can get into. For shredders, the regular beat forces them into a disciplined, economical style. And any guitar player can greatly benefit from the metronome’s mathematical regularity, a regularity which underlies all music. So, without further ado, here are two free computer based metronomes that are must-haves:

Weird Metronome

Yes, the name is literally weird. This metronome is simple, basic and free. The pros are that it’s a downloadable program so you don’t need an internet connection. It allows you to program simple patterns with other instruments and save these for future practice.



One feature is a red graphical dot which dilates and contracts based on the beat—very handy if the sound of your instrument starts drowning out the metronome and you need a visual cue. The cons are that the smooth running of the program depends largely on your computer system performance. In other words, if your computer is running many programs at once or has low memory, then the program may skip beats, making the timing irregular and unreliable.


MetronomeOnline.com

Unlike the metronome above, this online metronome is regular and consistent, but requires you to be connected to the internet. Another con is that instrument sounds or exact beat number cannot be selected…but hey, its free!

Online Metronome

An Easy Way to Know Where All the Notes are on the Guitar Fretboard

One pain in playing the guitar is finding out where notes lie on the fretboard. Well, it’s a pain no longer! With this method, you can locate any note in all its positions easily. The first step is to memorize the notes on the 6^th and 5^th strings. (C’mon, you have to do some work..). This is very easy:

6^th String notes: (E open) F F# G G# A A# B C D D# E F …..

5^th String notes: (A open) A# B C D D# E F F# G G# A A# …..

Now just memorize the layout of the following triangles:

Diagram I: Strings 6, String 4 and String 1
Here, the orange boxes mark the location of the same note in different places.
In this case all the notes are: G

Diagram II: Strings 5, String 3 and String 2
Here, the orange boxes mark the location of the same note in different places.
In this case all the notes are: D

This shortcut method can save some time and is the foundation for playing octaves.