Hi all is it important to use a metronome as a beginner on the bass
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Not essential but it will help you keep time. The bass player and drummer cannot get away with crappy rhythm. Lots of free apps for your smart phone (whatever the operating system).
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Or if you’re a garageband user (don’t know other DAWs), the built in drummer feature is imo leaps and bounds better than the metronome feature. I regret that it took me over a year to start using it.
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All kinds of drum tracks on YouTube as well.
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+1 on using some kind of drum machine. Far more engaging than a metronome!
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Drum loops are 1000x more interesting to play with than a metronome. I found this website a while ago and it’s lived in my bookmarks since.
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Yes and to all of the above suggestions. Click track is awesome but in the 21st century we have a lot of cool methods.
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Metronome yes.
All suggestions above are all extremely valid. I do tend to just search “metronome” on google and use their own.
And as you can see… the other one I also use a lot is the Musicca one from the site that @CrayWolf linked. 
I didn’t like playing with the metronome at the start, but I have improved very much since I started including it into daily practice sessions.
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Thank you all for the brilliant advice it’s helped a lot
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Anytime! We’ll always help!
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Drums beat metronomes every time for me for practice, it’s just too easy to get good drum patterns from so many different sources, and they are way less boring and more inviting to play to.
Metronomes are often useful in conjunction with drums as well though, if you practice with a DAW or a drum source with a click track.
One song I am working on covering now has a really funky drum pattern so I play a metronome over the drums and it helps a lot.
For practice, metronomes are never any more useful than a decent drum machine because most drum machines can be dumbed down to do everything a metronome can.
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Much better than trying to use the SBL Rhythm Trainer (or whatever it’s called) app on Android. It just kept force closing on me, so I uninstalled it. Once I got a BeatBuddy, I stopped using metronomes. I much prefer drum loops.
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It’s not even that they’re more interesting for me. If your goal is to play with other people, I think you’re way better off learning to keep time off of actual drums vs the click, click, click of a metronome. Practice like you play…
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SBL Groove Trainer.
Tbh, I think it’s pretty decent for a free app. But I do still prefer other tools… and yeah… most of the time is the Google one.
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Drum tracks are much more fun and will keep your interest, but, if it doesn’t bore you, the best way to develop your own time and groove is to play a metronome only on two and four and make that metronome swing.
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Agreed with the technique but any drum machine or virtual instrument can do this too, and just as easily
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although i also must say i have heard people say as complete beginners that there is too much to focus on timekeeping wise with drum tracks and a simple click is sometimes easier. i get that, although i think everyone should learn to play along with drums as they improve.
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Wrong way round. The drum loop supplies a good part of the groove for beginners, fun and instructive to follow it, try to fit in. The better you get, though, the more YOU have to create the funk, and make the sparse metronome beats come in perfect, as if it were swinging along with you. Takes much more practice and skill than playing with a drum track.