What odd time signatures are, and why a plain click is not enough
An odd (or asymmetric) time signature is one whose beats cannot be split into equal halves: 5, 7, 11 or 13 beats per bar, and 9 when it is not felt as three groups of three. Nobody who plays this music actually counts to seven. A bar of 7/8 is heard as short groups of two and three eighth notes, “ONE-two ONE-two ONE-two-three”, and the whole skill of playing in seven is knowing where those groups start without thinking about it.
A basic metronome set to seven beats gives you seven identical ticks and one louder downbeat. You can count along at 90 BPM, but at 200 eighth notes per minute the downbeat arrives every 2.1 seconds and the six clicks in between tell you nothing about the shape of the bar. What you need to hear is the grouping: an accent on the first click of every group, so that the click itself sounds like the riff. That is what this page of the metronome is set up for: pick a time signature, pick or type a grouping, and every beat can still be made louder, normal or silent by hand.
The beat unit: 7/4 versus 7/8
7/4 and 7/8 both have seven counts per bar, but the count is a different note. In 7/4 the beat is a quarter note and the music is usually slow enough that each beat gets its own subdivisions; Pink Floyd’s “Money” is 7/4, and most players feel it as a four followed by a three. In 7/8 the beat is an eighth note, the tempo of those eighths is high and the only sensible way to feel the bar is in groups of two and three.
In this metronome, BPM always refers to the denominator note of the time signature. Set 7/8 at 200 BPM and you get 200 eighth-note clicks per minute, one bar every 2.1 seconds. Set 7/4 at 100 BPM and you get 100 quarter-note clicks per minute, one bar every 4.2 seconds, while the eighth notes inside run at 200 per minute. Each count in 7/8 at 200 is therefore twice as fast as a count in 7/4 at 100, even though the eighth notes move at the same speed. Choose the denominator that matches the sheet music or the way you count; do not halve the BPM to compensate for a change of denominator, because the click will also tell you which note it is counting.
To set it here: click one of the presets (4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 5/4, 7/4, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8) or use the Beats field with its − and + buttons for any count from 1 to 32 and choose the note value from the list (1, 2, 4, 8 or 16). The note under the fields tells you which note the BPM is counting. Presets come with their usual grouping applied; a count you enter yourself starts with a single accent on beat 1 until you choose a grouping. A change of beat count takes effect at the next bar, so you can switch from 7/8 to 5/8 while the click is running without breaking the pulse.
Grouping, and what each pattern feels like
Grouping accents the first beat of every group. The tool offers the combinations of twos and threes for the current beat count as chips (the list is trimmed for very long bars), and a custom field for anything else. The presets come with the most common grouping already applied: 5/4 as 3+2, 6/8 as 3+3, 7/8 as 2+2+3, 9/8 as 3+3+3 and 11/8 as 3+3+3+2. Below is what the common patterns feel like, with a phrase you can say out loud while the click runs.
5/4: 3+2 and 2+3
3+2 is long-short: “ONE-two-three ONE-two”. This is the “Take Five” feel, with the piano vamp landing on beats 1 and 4, a small waltz followed by a step. 2+3 is short-long: “ONE-two ONE-two-three”. The bar starts like a march and then stretches; you hear it in the fast Bulgarian paidushko and in a lot of progressive rock riffs that begin with two hard notes. The “Mission: Impossible” theme is also in 5/4, but its riff is long-long-short-short in eighth notes (3+3+2+2); if you want the click to spell that out, set 10/8 and type 3+3+2+2 into the custom grouping field.
7/8: 2+2+3, 3+2+2 and 2+3+2
- 2+2+3 (“ONE-two ONE-two ONE-two-three”) is by far the most common seven in rock, metal and Balkan music; the Bulgarian rachenitsa is exactly this. Two quick steps and a long one make the bar lean forward into the next downbeat, which is why riffs in this grouping feel like they are constantly tumbling.
- 3+2+2 (“ONE-two-three ONE-two ONE-two”) is front-loaded: a long group first, then two short ones. The Greek kalamatianos is 3+2+2, and it is the grouping to try when a 7/8 riff sounds “late” with the default accents.
- 2+3+2 (“ONE-two ONE-two-three ONE-two”) has the long group in the middle. It is the rarest of the three and sounds like 4/4 with a stretched second beat; prog bands use it precisely because it refuses to settle.
9/8 and 11/8
9/8 as 3+3+3 is compound, not odd: it feels like a slow three with a triplet swing, the jig and “Ride of the Valkyries” feel. 9/8 as 2+2+2+3 is the “Blue Rondo à la Turk” feel, three even steps and a longer fourth; Brubeck plays three bars of it and then one bar of 3+3+3, which is a good exercise to alternate here by hand. 11/8 as 3+3+3+2 is three waltz bars and a hiccup, the way “Whipping Post” is counted. 4+4+3 feels like two bars of 4/4 with the second one cut short by an eighth, a favourite in progressive metal. Because the chips only combine twos and threes, 4+4+3 is typed into the custom field.
13/8 and beyond
For 13/8, 15/16, 17/16 or 21/8, set the beat count and note value, then type the grouping into the custom field: 3+3+3+2+2 or 4+4+5 for thirteen, 4+4+4+3 for 15/16, 3+3+3+3+3+2 for 17/16. The field accepts plus signs, spaces or commas, so “2 2 3” works as well as “2+2+3”. Press Enter or leave the field to apply. Groups must add up to the beat count; if they do not, the tool says so and keeps the previous pattern. “No grouping” returns to a single accent on beat 1. On this page the tool opens in 7/8 grouped 2+2+3 unless you have already changed the meter.
Accents and mutes as a practice tool
Grouping is only a shortcut. Every beat in the accent row is a button that cycles through accent, normal and mute, and the patterns you can build with those three states are where the real practice value is.
- Mute the downbeat. In 7/8 grouped 2+2+3, set beat 1 to mute. You still hear the accents on beats 3 and 5, but the start of the bar is silent and you have to supply it. If your riff lands on the missing downbeat every time, you feel the meter; if you are early or late, you were counting the clicks rather than the groups. The next level is muting every accented beat and leaving only the normal ones.
- Accent the last group. Press “Reset accents”, click beat 1 down to normal, then accent beat 5 alone (the start of the three in 2+2+3) or beat 7 alone. Hearing the end of the bar rather than its start shows you how the last group pushes into the next downbeat, which is where most seven riffs stumble.
- A whole bar of silence every other bar. Two-bar patterns are not a separate feature, so build them from a longer bar: for 7/8 set 14/8, type 2+2+3+2+2+3 as the grouping, then click beats 8 to 14 until they are all muted. You now hear one bar of grouped click and play the next bar alone, and the click returns exactly where the third bar should start. The same trick gives 10/4 for two bars of 5/4 and, since a bar may have up to 32 beats, 28/8 for one bar of click followed by three bars on your own. Remember that the speed trainer counts these long bars as one bar each.
A practice routine for odd meters
- Count out loud. Set the meter and grouping, choose a slow tempo (7/8 at 120 to 140 BPM is comfortable) and say the groups with the click: “ONE-two ONE-two ONE-two-three”, never “one two three four five six seven”. Do this until the accented clicks feel inevitable.
- Clap the groups. Clap only on the accented clicks while still saying the count. Then mute the downbeat, as above, and keep clapping.
- Play one note per group. A palm-muted open string or a power chord on beats 1, 3 and 5 of a 7/8 bar, three attacks per bar, nothing else. Then two notes per group, then fill the long group with three. You are now playing the skeleton of every riff in that grouping.
- Play the riff at the same slow tempo until you get eight bars in a row clean, with the downbeat muted on the last four.
- Raise the tempo with the speed trainer. For a 7/8 riff, a run from 140 to 200 BPM in +5 steps every 8 bars is 13 stages and 104 bars and takes a little under four and a half minutes with the count-in; every change lands on the 7/8 bar line, so the riff is never cut in half. Use +2 steps above 200. If the last stage falls apart, set the target to the last clean tempo plus 4 and run it again tomorrow.
The guitar practice page covers the picking-hand side of this: alternate picking and palm muting at tempo, and how to log the sessions so you can see the numbers move.
Subdivision in odd meters
Subdivision adds 1, 2, 3 or 4 clicks per beat and is independent from the denominator. The labels (eighths, triplets, sixteenths) describe the 4/4 case; in an /8 meter “2 per beat” actually produces sixteenth notes and “3 per beat” produces sixteenth triplets, so read the options as clicks per beat.
Turn subdivision on when the beats are slow and long: 7/4 or 5/4 below about 90 BPM, where a quarter-note click leaves 0.7 seconds of silence and you tend to rush the long groups. Two clicks per beat keep the eighths honest. Use 3 per beat for a shuffle in five, and 2 per beat in 7/8 when a riff is built on sixteenth notes and you are learning it below 120 BPM. Turn it off as soon as the groups are in your body, and always at high tempo: 7/8 at 240 with 2 per beat is 480 clicks per minute, which is noise, not information. The subdivision clicks can be silenced with a switch while the setting stays, so you can bring them back with one tap when a passage falls apart. Muting the subdivision while keeping the group accents is the last step before playing the riff with no click at all.
Frequently asked questions
Can I set 15/16?
Yes. The beat count goes from 1 to 32 and the note value can be 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16, so 15/16, 13/8, 17/16 or 21/8 are all valid, and BPM then counts the denominator note. A count you type in starts with a single accent on beat 1; for fifteen, 3+3+3+3+3 is the first grouping chip, and 4+4+4+3 goes into the custom grouping field.
What does grouping actually change?
Only the accent pattern: the first beat of every group becomes an accent and the remaining beats become normal, and the beat row shows the result. Tempo, bar length and subdivision are untouched. After applying a grouping you can still click any beat to change it by hand.
Is there a limit on the number of beats?
A bar can have at most 32 beats. That is enough for two bars of 15/16 or four bars of 7/8 written as one pattern, which is how you build multi-bar accent or mute patterns. Longer cycles have to be split into repeating bars.
How do I make 7/8 feel like 3+2+2 instead of 2+2+3?
Choose the 7/8 preset, which starts as 2+2+3, then click the 3+2+2 chip under Grouping or type 3+2+2 into the custom grouping field and press Enter. The accents move to beats 1, 4 and 6, so the long group comes first and the bar ends with two short steps.
Does the speed trainer work in odd meters?
Yes. A stage counts bars of whatever time signature is set, and the tempo changes only on the bar line of that meter, so a 7/8 riff is never cut in the middle. “Every 4 bars” in 7/8 means 28 eighth notes, and BPM refers to the eighth note because 8 is the denominator.
Can I mute individual beats?
Yes. Click a beat in the accent row to cycle it through accent, normal and mute; a muted beat is silent but still takes its time, so the bar keeps its length and the beat still counts towards the grouping. Any combination is allowed, including a bar that is silent apart from a single beat.
Is 9/8 an odd time signature?
It depends on the grouping. 9/8 as 3+3+3 is a compound meter that feels like a slow three, while 9/8 as 2+2+2+3 or 3+2+2+2 is asymmetric and behaves like the other odd meters on this page. The metronome treats both the same way: nine eighth-note clicks per bar with accents where the groups start.
Can I send an odd-meter setup to someone else?
Yes. The share link puts the tempo, time signature, accents, grouping, subdivision and trainer settings into the URL, so a student who opens it sees 11/8 grouped 3+3+3+2 at 180 BPM exactly as you set it. Nothing is uploaded and the link contains no personal data.