Pacing metronome: speak in time with a steady beat

How to use it

1. Read Before you start. It sums up what two sources say about speaking in time with a beat, and what this tool does and does not do.
2. Press Start. Nothing plays until you do. Choose a tempo from 30 to 180 beats per minute with the minus and plus buttons, the number box or the slider. Under Beat you can also choose a quick number or tap in time with a beat you have in mind.
3. Under Beat, choose a sound, the volume, a count-in of 0 to 4 beats, and how many beats are in a group. You can make the first beat of each group sound different.
4. Under Speak with the beat, type your own words or load a practice sentence. Put a hyphen inside a word to make smaller units. The beat lights one unit, or two, for each beat.
5. Press Stop, the space bar or the Escape key to stop. The beat stops by itself at the end of your words, unless you choose to go back to the start.

Good to know

• This tool is a steady beat to practice with. How you use it is your choice. A speech-language pathologist can tell you whether it fits your goals. It is not therapy and it is not medical advice. If you feel unsafe, or you might hurt yourself or someone else, go to Crisis help now.
• What two sources say. A Stuttering Foundation article by Per Alm, Ph.D., University of Alberta (Winter 2006) says: "persons who stutter usually become fluent when speaking to the pace of a metronome." The article does not say how well this works in everyday speech. A 2022 research report in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Garnett and colleagues) says that adults who stutter "temporarily become fluent while synchronizing their speech with an external rhythm, such as a metronome or another speaker." The word temporarily is the report's own. This tool quotes those two sentences and nothing more from them. It makes no claim about everyday conversation.
• The Stuttering Foundation tells people who are talking with someone who stutters not to make remarks like "Slow down", "Take a breath" or "Relax", and says that such simplistic advice can be felt as demeaning and is not helpful. This tool never gives that kind of advice. It does not teach any way of speaking, it does not set a goal for how you speak, and it never suggests a speed. The starting tempo of 60 beats per minute is only a starting number, and the quick choices under Beat are labeled by number only.
• How the beat is timed. The beats are queued ahead of time on the audio clock of your browser, so each beat is exactly 60 divided by the tempo seconds after the one before it, even when the page is busy. When you change the tempo while the beat is playing, the new tempo starts from the first beat that has not been queued yet, a fraction of a second later. The picture follows the sound as your browser reports it. Some Bluetooth headphones and speakers add a delay, so the picture can come a little before the sound.
• What the screen does. The beat words, such as Beat 3 of 4, and a small marker that moves from place to place change together, once for each beat. Nothing flashes. Above 150 beats per minute only the words show. In calm mode the marker is off and only the words change. The lit unit in your words never moves more than three times a second, unless you turn on Let the highlight move faster than three times a second. At 2 units for each beat that limit is reached above 90 beats per minute, and the highlight stays off until you choose otherwise. The beat still plays.
• Units. Your words are split at spaces. A hyphen inside a word makes smaller units that you choose, so tel-e-phone is three units. Other dash characters work the same way, because some keyboards turn two hyphens into a long dash. A hyphen on its own is not a unit. The tool does not split words by itself and does not count syllables.
• Tap tempo. After 4 taps the tempo is set from the average gap between your last 8 taps. A tap less than 0.15 seconds after the one before is counted as a bounce and ignored. After a pause of more than 2 seconds the taps start again. A tempo outside 30 to 180 is moved to the nearest end, and the page tells you.
• Count-in and groups. A count-in plays 0 to 4 beats at the same tempo, with no accent, before the first beat. A group is 1 to 8 beats. The beat words count from 1 to the size of the group and start again. With a group of 1 the words count up, and an accent would be on every beat. The accent is a higher and louder beat.
• The sounds are made by your browser, and no sound files are used. Volume 0 is silent, and the picture still follows the beat. Play one beat plays a single beat so that you can check the sound. If your browser blocks sound, the page says so and nothing plays until you press Start again. If your device interrupts the sound, the beat stops and the page says so.
• Limits: 30 to 180 beats per minute, 2,000 characters of words, a volume from 0 to 100 percent, 0 to 4 count-in beats and groups of 1 to 8 beats. Your settings and your words are saved in this browser only. Clearing your browser data erases them. This tool never listens to you. It does not use the microphone and it does not measure how you speak.

Where this comes from

• A Stuttering Foundation article by Per Alm, Ph.D., University of Alberta (Winter 2006) says "persons who stutter usually become fluent when speaking to the pace of a metronome." It does not say how well this works in everyday speech: Stuttering Foundation: Stuttering and The Basal Ganglia (Per Alm, Winter 2006)
• A 2022 research report says that adults who stutter "temporarily become fluent while synchronizing their speech with an external rhythm, such as a metronome or another speaker." This tool quotes that sentence only. It does not use the report's own results, which are about choral reading: Garnett and others, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 22 July 2022: Neural activity during solo and choral reading
• The Stuttering Foundation advises people not to make remarks like "Slow down," "Take a breath," or "Relax," because such simplistic advice can be felt as demeaning and is not helpful: Stuttering Foundation: 6 Tips for Speaking With Someone Who Stutters
• The stuttering guide
• The Resources page
• Crisis help

More tools

General support only. These tools are not medical, legal or diagnostic advice, and they do not replace professional help. If you are in crisis, go to Crisis help.