Do the exercise you’ll learn in this lesson for a week, and you’ll notice a huge improvement in your strumming skills. The full lesson is here!
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Justin is definitely right, doing the exercise and keeping in time at 60 bpm is much more difficult than 80, 100 and 120.
Michael
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Love the videos. How do we set up your app to accent on beat 1?
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Click BEATS down the bottom and select 4/4 and it’ll accent beat 1 differently to the other 3 bars!
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Been doing this for a few days now and I’ve already noticed some problems. Firstly, wow, I’m so inconsistent with hitting the strings. Sometimes I’m getting all 6 and at others I’m only hitting 4 or 5. 60 bpm is mostly definitely the hardest by I waver in and out at all the tempos. This is great practice, though, and it’s clearly something I should have started doing a long time ago!
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I did the exercise for one month, 5 minutes everyday…but, even if I perceived myself as enough focused and relaxed at the same time, I wasn’t able to be so accurate to make the click disappear (maybe once for a few seconds!) Nevermind, I hope the exercise did me well nevertheless and I’m going to try again once in a while.
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Been working in SOS program, really going back to basics. When I play by myself — acoustic - I play cover songs that sound OK
Working on SOS with metronome and struggling, as I realize sometimes what I think sounds OK is off. I may make chord change on a 3!
I realize I also add random strums, but not sure why even though sounds fine
Fascinating
Frustrating
Great classes
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Hey welcome to the forum!
Have you tried recoding yourself?
That’s always an eye opener!
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I’ve never recorded with metronome, but just alone
I realize all the timing involved - strumming is and trying to sing.
With metronome at 50! I’m realizing where verse starts — on the 3 of a bar! Anne not just winging it
I plan on recording with metronome
Thanks for advice
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In my early days with Justin’s courses and playing in general I really struggled when I tried to play along with a metronome. It sucked all the joy out of my learning so I didn’t worry about it for another six months or so. Next time I tried it, same thing, so I left it alone again.
Third time lucky charm. Now I use it fairly regularly and it helps me a lot. I gigged for a while with a friend performing as a duo and what was good during rehearsals was if either of us was unsure about the tempo, out came the metronome (app) and we played to that.
It’s a great tool.
I also use one of these: https://www.boss.info/au/products/dr-01s/
A bit more fun than a boring metronome app
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You know how they call metronome?
Humblifier.
Keep at it. It’s one of the best tools for musicians.
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Yep, the metronome is your friend.
It can be a annoying in the beginning, but the more you practice, the better it gets.
Especially if you’re going along with eight and sixteenth notes. Also, for other time signatures, like 4/5, a 7/8 for instance, the metronome is your friend.
You just need to get acquainted.
And as always, start very slow. The moment you got, let’s say, a 4/4 down at 40, you can move up at bit to 45. Pure downstrokes.
When that’s going well, ad upstrokes on the “and”. Increase speed as you progress and soon you’ll be playing in time.
But remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint…
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That looks amazing! Another thing I didn’t know that I needed 
I mean, not to replace the metronome, of course.
It took me a while to start using a metronome but I noticed an improvement once I did 
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It doesn’t stop being useful, either. Yesterday evening’s practice for me was almost all with the metronome - both humbling as it showed that there were measures of a fingerstyle piece that I thought I had down that I clearly didn’t - and gratifying as I got a different piece cleanly up to ~90% speed of where I want to play it - after time spent working on accuracy and note quality slowed to 60% speed
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I noticed that it’s harder for me to stay with the slowest tempo of 60 BPM. I’ll get ahead of the beat because I want to go faster. Starting to overcome my resistance to the metronome though😀.
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@Bluetar Going at a slow bpm can be very difficult because the spaces between the beeps on the metronome are further apart, meaning more time for you to jump in and play at the wrong moment. Very slow and very fast are both difficult with challenges of their own.
Keep at it.
I can play with a metronome now. Strumming and single notes. When I play a scale in 4/4 it is fine also 8/8 but not when there is a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a with picking single notes. Especially when you have to miss a beat. I am either too fast or too slow. It works without a metronome better but the timing is off. I practice the whole tab. It is about 30 seconds long. When I listen to the melody I can step with my foot on beat but playing is different. With the metronome on and playing my foot gets faster or slower. It isn’t synchrone with the metronome. I struggled with that problem a long time. I use the KORG TM-50 Metronome. I had the app from Justin Guitar but my android phone is broken. I use an iPhone now.
Is it better to strum along that beat and it is going to get better by its self?
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Hi Roland, I struggle with this same thing, but on eighths! My foot wants to tap on the ands as well as the main beat! 
I use Justin’s TimeTrainer (all one word) app on my iPhone and iPad - is that the app you were referring to? If not, you might check it out. You can set it to click on the 1s, 2s… and on divisions of the beat. For 16ths as you describe, you would set the app to 4 beats per measure, and the divisions to 4 per beat. You can set different sounds for highlight the main beat (1, 2, 3, 4) and “secondary” beats. I just checked, and TimeTrainer is available on Apple’s App Store. I don’t recall how much it costs, but it was not much. Might be worth a look?
Your description is a little unclear (8/8 timing???), but I think what you are meaning is that you are having trouble playing triplets over the metronome with 4:4 time (you called it “1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a”, it is normally called “1 trip lett 2 trip lett 3 trip lett 4 trip lett”). My best advice is to set the metronome to a slow tempo where each click is on the down beat (1 2 3 4) and then practice playing 3 evenly-spaced notes, one on the click and two between each click.
YMMV
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