Gap trainer
Gap trainer: practice with silent bars
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A gap trainer mutes the metronome for whole bars while the clock keeps counting. You keep playing through the silence, and when the click comes back you hear right away whether you rushed, dragged or stayed on the grid. It trains the internal clock that a constant click lets you lean on.
In Accel Metronome nothing sounds in a silent bar, and the click returns exactly on the grid, so the landing tells you the truth about your time.
Three patterns
Fixed
A repeating pattern of 1 to 8 bars of click followed by 1 to 8 silent bars. Predictable, so you can focus on holding the tempo.
Random Pro
Each bar has a chance of being silent, from 10 to 80 percent, with a cap on how many silent bars may come in a row. You cannot count your way to the next gap, so you have to keep time everywhere.
Ladder Pro
The gaps grow one bar at a time, up to 16 bars. A ladder shows you how long you can hold the tempo on your own before you start to drift.
The five built-in presets
| Preset | Pattern | Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Warm-up | Fixed | 4 bars click, 1 bar silent |
| Classic | Fixed | 2 bars click, 2 bars silent |
| Advanced | Fixed | 1 bar click, 3 bars silent |
| Light random Pro | Random | 20 % silence, at most 1 silent bar in a row |
| Ladder Pro | Ladder | 2 bars click, gap grows from 1 to 8 bars |
You can also save your own presets next to the built-in ones Pro.
How to practice with it
- Start with Warm-up. Four bars of click and one silent bar. Play something simple, such as a basic groove or a scale, at a tempo you are comfortable with.
- Move to Classic once you land cleanly after every gap. Two bars on, two bars off.
- Try Advanced: one bar of click, three silent. Now you are keeping time on your own most of the time.
- Make it unpredictable with Light random, so you cannot anticipate the gap.
- Find your limit with Ladder: the gap gets longer until the landing tells you that you have drifted.
Listen to the first beat after each gap. If the click lands ahead of you, you dragged; if it lands behind you, you rushed. Then try the same preset at a few different tempos.
To build speed instead, see the dynamic metronome. For a comparison with Gap Click and other apps, see Gap Click alternatives.