Metronome

Press play and you hear a click on every beat, with a louder click on beat 1. Drag the slider or use the plus and minus buttons to set the tempo in beats per minute (BPM); the big number is the tempo, and the words under it say what that speed feels like, from a slow walk to a sprint. Beats per bar sets how many clicks there are before the accent comes round again: 4 for almost all pop and dance music, 3 for a waltz, 6 for a 6/8 feel.

Tap tempo: if you want to match a song, tap the Tap tempo button (or the T key) along with it. After four taps the metronome settles on your tempo. The tap tempo page does the same with a bigger button and tells you which genres live at that speed.

Subdivide adds quieter ticks on the eighths or sixteenths between the beats. That is the easiest way to feel where “off the beat” is, which is where most of the interesting hits in a groove fall.

Genre presets are the teaching part. Each one sets the tempo a style usually runs at, and once a genre is chosen, Genre beat swaps the click for that genre’s own drums at the same tempo, so you hear why house at 124 and trap at 140 feel nothing alike even though the numbers are close. Trap and dubstep are marked ½: they are written at 140 but the snare lands once a bar, so they feel like 70.

What you just heard: a click on every beat is the same idea as four-on-the-floor, the kick drum pattern under house and techno. The course’s free Tempo lesson teaches tempo as walking speed, with tracks to sort from slow to fast.