Metronome with Subdivisions — Eighths, Triplets, 16ths

A subdivision is what happens between the beats. This metronome clicks once per beat and can add softer clicks that divide each beat into two, three or four equal parts — eighths, triplets or sixteenths — while the downbeat keeps its accent. The page opens with eighths already selected.

How to use it

1. Start it. Press the large Start button or the Space bar. Nothing plays until you do.
2. Choose the meter. The meter row sets how many beats are in a bar (1 is a free pulse with no accents). Four is the default.
3. Choose the subdivision. Off, Eighths, Triplets or 16ths. This page starts on Eighths; switch at any time, even while it is running.
4. Set the tempo. Drag the pendulum weight, use the tempo slider, or nudge with ←/→ (hold Shift for ±5). The range is 30–240 BPM.
5. Watch the beat tape. The strip under the instrument draws each click as it happens and keeps the last eight seconds, so you can see whether you are landing on the accent or trailing it.
6. Share or return to the setup. The URL carries your settings (?bpm=90&sig=4&sub=2) and the last used setup is remembered on the device.

Eighths, triplets and sixteenths

Setting	Clicks per beat	Divisions	Common use
Off	1	—	Reading the beat alone
Eighths	2	1/2	Rock, pop, marches, most everyday practice
Triplets	3	1/3, 2/3	6/8, shuffle, jazz, compound metre
16ths	4	1/4, 2/4, 3/4	Funk, fast passage work, drum rudiments

• Eighths are the music most people play. They expose rushing quickly, because a rushed second eighth is obvious against the beat click.
• Triplets are three equal notes in the space of one beat. They are the written feel of compound metres like 6/8 and the grid behind blues and jazz swing, even though swing itself is unequal.
• Sixteenths are four equal notes per beat. They are the fastest common subdivision and the most useful for checking articulation and picking hand evenness.

When to practise with each

• Eighths — default practice. Scales, chord changes, sight-reading and anything where you want to feel the off-beat without extra noise.
• Triplets — compound and swing material. Pieces in 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8, shuffle grooves, and jazz lines where the underlying subdivision is three.
• Sixteenths — evenness and speed work. Funk grooves, drum rudiments, tremolo, and any passage where four notes share a beat.
• Off — checking yourself. Turn the subdivision back off regularly; if the passage falls apart without the extra clicks, the subdivision was doing the work for you.

How to read the metronome

• The beat click is the pulse; it lands at the tempo you set.
• The bar begins at the first beat. The primary accent marks beat 1 in every meter.
• The secondary accent marks the mid-bar in even meters: beat 3 in 4/4, beat 4 in 6/8, beat 4 in the 5/4 meter, and beats 3 and 5 in the 7/8 meter. Subdivision clicks never carry an accent.
• The beat tape draws the last eight seconds of clicks, subdivided beats included, so a drifting hand shows up as a thickening or gap in the pattern.

Practice drills

1. The subdivision ladder. At one comfortable tempo, play a scale or a short passage with eighths, then switch to triplets, then to sixteenths, without changing tempo. Most players speed up when the subdivision gets denser; the drill is to keep the beat rock-steady and let only the note density change.
2. Count aloud through the accent. Set 4/4 with eighths and count “1-and, 2-and, 3-and, 4-and” out loud, accenting beat 1 with your voice. Then play the passage again without counting. If the accent drifts, your bar is shorter or longer than the metronome’s bar even though the beats match.
3. Land on the one. Set sixteenths at a slow tempo, play a two-bar phrase, and make the last note of bar two land exactly on the primary accent. The extra clicks give you four landing points per beat, so you can hear how far ahead or behind your phrase ends.

Common mistakes

• Starting with sixteenths. Dense subdivisions at a fast tempo teach sloppy execution; sixteenths belong after eighths and triplets are stable.
• Treating triplets as swing. Swing pairs are unequal; the tool’s triplets are equal thirds. Use them as the framework, then place the long/short pair yourself.
• Letting the subdivision become the beat. The extra clicks are quieter for a reason; if your foot or voice follows the subdivision instead of the beat, you have inverted the reference.
• Changing subdivision instead of tempo. When a passage fails, most players reach for a slower subdivision when a slower tempo is the honest fix.

Accuracy and limits

• Even subdivisions only. There is no swing, shuffle or dotted subdivision setting.
• One voice, one subdivision. The main voice plays the beat grid; a second, independent voice with its own subdivision lives on the polyrhythm generator.
• Subdivision clicks are mixed low. Around a quarter of the level of a normal beat click, so they stay audible but secondary; there is no separate level control for them.
• Timing relies on the same lookahead scheduler as the main metronome, so the clicks stay stable when the page is busy. The full explanation lives on the metronome page.
• Settings are shared with the main metronome. Both pages store the same settings under the same key, so a tempo you set on one page is the tempo the other opens with.