Support

Help for the Riff Metronome website and the iOS and Android apps

What Riff Metronome does

Riff Metronome is a metronome and drum machine for practicing. Set a tempo from 20 to 300 BPM and play along to a click, or to a drum groove in the style of a famous rock or metal song, at the song's own tempo. You can edit any groove in the step grid, play the tap pads, add your own recorded sounds, and let the speed trainer raise the tempo for you.

There is no account and nothing to sign in to. See the Privacy Policy for how your data is handled (in short, it stays on your device).

Quick help

Tempo

Press the big play button to start and stop. Change the tempo with the minus and plus buttons, the slider, or by typing a number into the BPM display. Use the box next to the play button to choose the time signature, from 1/4 to 12/4.

Each dot above the tempo is one beat of the bar. Tap a dot to cycle it between accent, normal and muted.

Tap tempo

Tap the Tap tempo button (or press T on a keyboard) in time with a song. From the second tap on, the app works out the tempo from your most recent taps. If you pause for more than two seconds, the count starts again.

Grooves

Under Groove, pick a Pattern. With Use song tempo ticked, choosing a song also sets its tempo. Turn it off to keep your own tempo.

The step grid shows what each drum plays. Tap a cell to cycle through hit, accent, ghost note and off. Right-click or long-press a cell to clear it. Grid switches between 8th notes, 16th notes and triplets, Swing pushes the off-beats late, and Humanize adds small random changes in timing and loudness.

Use Add track for more drum sounds, and the solo and mute buttons on each track to hear one part at a time. Save as keeps your edited groove on your device. Export and Import let you back up a pattern as a file or move it to another device.

Drum kits

The Kit menu changes the sound of all the drums. Classic is the original synthesized sound, and the recorded kits are real drums (Red Zeppelin and Black Pearl) or a recorded snare (rimshot or concert). Your kit choice stays when you change songs. The first time you pick a recorded kit it takes a moment to load.

Tap pads

Play the drums yourself on the pads, or with keys 1 to 9. Switch on Record into grid and press play: your hits snap to the nearest step while the groove plays.

Recording your own sounds

In My sounds, press Record a sound and allow the microphone when asked. Make one sound, such as a hand clap or a stick click, then press Stop. A recording stops by itself after 5 seconds. The silence before and after is trimmed so the hit lands right on the beat, and the level is evened out.

You can also choose audio files (WAV, MP3, M4A or OGG, up to 5 MB each). Each sound can be previewed, renamed, deleted, used as the click with Use as click, or picked for any track in the grid. Your sounds stay on your device.

Click, count-in and speed trainer

Under Click you can pick the click sound and volume, a subdivision (quarter notes, 8ths, triplets or 16ths), and a one-bar count-in. Switch on the speed trainer to raise the tempo by a set number of BPM every few bars until it reaches the limit you choose.

Offline use

The iOS and Android apps contain everything they need and work without a connection. The website works offline too: open it once while you are online and it saves its files in your browser. The screen stays awake while the metronome plays, on devices that allow it.

Keyboard shortcuts

Space: Play or stop
T: Tap tempo
Up / Down: Tempo plus or minus 1 (hold Shift for 5)
1 to 9: Play a pad
R: Turn recording into the grid on or off

Troubleshooting

No sound

Tap Play once. Phones and browsers keep audio locked until you touch the screen. Press the play button, the tap tempo button or a pad once to unlock it.
Check the switches in the app. Make sure Drums and Click are on, and that Master volume, Drum volume and Click volume are not turned down.
Check the phone volume. Raise the volume with the side buttons while the metronome is playing. On Android, make sure the media volume is up, not only the ringer volume.
Check where the sound is going. If Bluetooth headphones, a speaker or AirPlay are connected, the sound plays there. Wireless headphones also add a small delay.

No sound on iPhone or iPad

Silent mode. Riff Metronome asks iOS to play its sound as media, so it plays even when the Ringer/Silent switch is set to silent, on supported iOS versions. If you still hear nothing, flip the switch to ringer on to rule it out.
Volume. Press the volume-up button while the metronome is playing. iPhone media volume is separate from the ringer volume.
Tap Play once after opening the app, so iOS lets it start the audio.
If it still stays silent, close the app completely and open it again.

The microphone does not work

The first time you press Record a sound, your phone or browser asks for permission. Choose Allow. The app uses the microphone only while you record.
If you chose not to allow it, turn it back on. On an iPhone or iPad, open Settings, find Riff Metronome and switch Microphone on. On Android, open Settings, Apps, Riff Metronome, Permissions, Microphone, and allow it. In a browser, use the site settings next to the address bar and allow the microphone for metronome.onlyai.ch. The exact menus differ a little between versions.
If the app says No microphone found, check that a microphone is connected and not in use by another app.
If it says Nothing was heard, record again a little louder or closer, and make the sound soon after you press record. Very quiet recordings are ignored.
You do not need the microphone to use the rest of the app. You can add audio files instead.

My patterns, sounds or settings are gone

The app keeps these only on your device. They are lost if you clear the site data for the website, use a private window, or delete and reinstall the app. Use Export to keep a backup file of a pattern you want to keep. Recorded and uploaded sounds are not part of a pattern file, so record or add them again on a new device.

The website looks out of date

Reload the page, or close it and open it again while you are online. The website checks for new files each time it loads. If it still looks old, clear the site data for metronome.onlyai.ch in your browser settings, and reload.

Timing feels off

The beat is scheduled on the audio clock, so it stays steady even when the screen is busy. If it still seems late against another instrument, wireless headphones and speakers are the most common cause, because they delay the sound. Try wired headphones or the built-in speaker.

Contact support

Write to info@onlyai.ch. To help us find the problem quickly, please tell us:

whether you use the website, the iPhone or iPad app, or the Android app;
your device model and its iOS or Android version, or your browser and its version;
what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead.

You do not need to send any personal information or recordings.

Credits

Recorded rock kits (Red Zeppelin and Black Pearl): AVL Drumkits by Glen MacArthur, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0. The samples were trimmed and leveled for this app and stay under the same license.
Recorded snares (rimshot and concert): the Versilian Community Sample Library (VCSL) by Versilian Studios, released under CC0.
Song grooves: the grooves are simplified practice approximations of each song's main drum feel, not transcriptions. Song names belong to their owners.

Riff Metronome is made by OnlyAI.