Lesson Tag: keeping time

Now we return to Deep Purple’s “Smoke On the Water,” and practice playing the main riff with a metronome. Slowly and easy does it at first, and then we can ramp up the tempo as we get more comfortable.

In this third installment, I share additional tips for using a metronome effectively. As ever, one of the main things to remember is to play with a metronome rather than just alongside it. And again, you never want to play any of these exercises faster than you can play them comfortably or cleanly.

The metronome is an important tool in your development as a guitarist. The average student tends to increase their tempo over the course of a song, but the metronome helps us to develop solid, consistent time in everything we play.