Accelerating Metronome
Tempo trainer & practice log
Only for iPhone
$4.99 · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.
iPhone
This is a metronome for people who practice every day. Set the tempo with your thumb, press BEGIN, and every minute you play is kept privately on your phone.
Most metronomes only keep a tempo. This one accelerates gradually while you play, and remembers every minute you practice.
Accelerating Metronome is a practice instrument, built by a working musician in Seattle over forty years of daily practice. This is not what a product committee would have asked for.
THE METRONOME
A rotary dial you drag with your thumb, the way a hardware tempo wheel works. 40 to 232 BPM across the traditional 42 settings. Fine at slow tempos where small changes matter, coarser at fast ones where they do not. Three voices: a woodblock that cuts through loud instruments, a pitched bar chime that sits under quiet playing, and a cowbell that plows through anything. Set the beats to a bar and the downbeat takes a voice of its own. A tuning reference from 440 to 445, and reference pitches for Standard and New Standard tuning.
TAP TEMPO
Tap the knot in the dial in time, and the tempo changes to what you tap.
THE ACCELERATOR
Choose a beginning tempo, a target, and how long you want to practice. It climbs on its own, in steps, so you invest your time playing rather than reaching for the dial. It tells you what is coming: the next tempo, how many bars away it is, and how long is left. When it reaches the target it holds there and keeps going, and that extra time is counted separately as play time. Practice and playing are not the same thing. And are not counted as if they were. Save and name your own Custom Ramps.
PEAK SPEED
Mark the tempo where you hit a wall and you have a record that grows. We graph your peak speeds so you can see your progress.
SPIN THE METRONOME
Press this and let the Universe choose a tempo for you. Practicing only at the tempos you like is how blind spots appear. And this is the cure. Spin the Metronome before a Group Rehearsal to bring everyone into listening and warming up together beginning with a cue from the Muse.
YOUR PRACTICE, VISUALIZED OVER TIME
Every session is documented: when, how long, which tempos, and what you were working on. Name your own categories and each one takes a color. The calendar shows a month at a glance, one circle per day, filling clockwise. A quarter turn for every fifteen minutes, gold and a number after you have completed a full hour of practice.
A Streak counts the days in a row you practiced, because momentum may motivate you to pick up the instrument on an evening you had decided not to. And practice more than an hour every day from Sunday to Saturday and the whole week is celebrated in gold. All seven days have to surpass an hour.
The value is in consistency rather than celebrating any single day: where the gaps fall, which day of the week you always lose, whether the good stretch you remember was three weeks or nine days.
AUDIO THAT MIXES
The click plays over (or under) your music, a podcast, or a backing track without interrupting them. The iPhone silent switch does not mute it. It keeps going when you switch apps or the screen locks, and so does the Accelerator. The beats sit on the audio hardware's clock rather than on a timer, so nothing drifts while you are not looking. Optional haptics help you feel the beat through the phone. The screen stays awake while it plays. One setting doubles the click volume.
YOURS, AND PRIVATE
No account, no login, no shared analytics, no advertising, no tracking, no subscription. You buy it once. Your practice history is on your phone and nothing is sent anywhere. You can back it up to your own Files or iCloud Drive whenever you like, in a plain file you can read. It works entirely offline, always. You can import it onto a new device.
Portrait or landscape. 1,163 quotes on practice and music appear between sessions, from Steve Ball, from Guitar Craft, and from Steve Turnidge.
A free web version with reduced features runs in any browser at steveball.com/metronome. The app is a premium way to experience a rich practice tool as a native app.
This is accelerating practice you can finally visualize over time.
Ratings & Reviews
INTEGRATED TUNER
Access a new integrated tuner by tapping the tuning fork on the metronome body near the Dial. Features presets for Standard Tuning, New Standard Tuning, or Chromatic for any instrument. Concert A can also be set to global standards from 432 to 445. It listens through the iPhone microphone, analysis happens in the app, only on your phone. Nothing is stored, nothing is sent.
TAP TEMPO or TYPE TEMPO
Double tap the BPM number and type in your desired BPM with the soft-keyboard (40 to 232). Or simply tap a tempo on the center of the Dial to jump to the BPM of what you're tapping.
ADJUSTABLE DIAL RESOLUTION
Choose your preferred dial resolution: 8, 4 or 1 BPM.
THE ACCELERATOR
A. Ramp Down: In addition to setting your own tempo Ramps Up parameters, you can now Ramp Back Down at the end, deciding to do this in the moment or before you begin. During the Ramp Down, tempo comes back the same way it climbed.
B. Stop at the End: You can also decide to 'Stop at the End' after your ramp completes instead of auto-continuing at the final tempo at the top of your Ramp. You can hear when you've reached the top because the Tiny Ramp Chime plays. And the Metronome stops.
C. Restart Ramp: you can easily go back to the beginning without ending the session by hitting the Restart Ramp button conveniently visible on top of your currently playing Ramp graphic.
D. Do not Log: you can turn off logging for the current session while it's running or turn it off before you launch the Accelerator for any session you wish to exclude from your ongoing Practice Log.
ENHANCED PITCH REFERENCES
You can tune by ear by auditioning pitches for every open string in Standard and New Standard Tuning, at the concert A you choose from 432 to 445. You can hear it as a Sine Wave for a pure tone, or Harmonic, which is an easier, full spectrum sound to help you tune by ear.
TWO TOURS
On first run, a 'Tour' launches to show you the primary features of the Accelerating Metronome: a Tour for the Metronome and a Tour for Settings. You can relaunch both Tours from Settings after their initial run if you wish to keep learning each time you open the app.
ALSO NEW
1. Sound Banks: there are three new drum sounds beside the three classic Sounds, and you choose which Bank shows on the main screen.
2. Themes: a light theme, for daylight and for anyone who reads dark text more easily.
3. Custom Dial Colors: three sets or one you pick yourself.
4. A full screen Practice view, and a Simple Canvas, which puts the metronome, Spin and the Accelerator on one screen.
5. Landscape mode, throughout.
6. FAQ Enhancements: The FAQ is expanded and now includes a picture with nearly every question.
7. Credits and Contact: you can now see and be grateful for everyone who has directly influenced the Accelerating Metronome design (so far.)
8. Stability, Perf, Bug Fixes: this update includes a long list of features, fixes and polish, most of them found by the people testing this. Thank you.
* * *
The developer, Steve Ball, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Steve Ball
- Size
- 37.8 MB
- Category
- Music
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 16.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 13.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Ballistic Music
