How it works
A 121 BPM metronome plays a tempo the usual wind-up scale skips: the most common arrangement in Wikipedia's Metronome article steps from 120 straight to 126. The article's own example of a finer modern adjustment is 120 to 121.
Read the full guide
Start
Tap the pad, or press Space, and 121 starts as an unaccented click: no beat is raised, so no bar is marked. A second tap stops it.
Change the tempo
Tap the number under the pad and type another tempo, or use minus and plus. Each press moves the click by one beat a minute, the same small step that separates this page from 120.
Questions and answers
Can you hear the difference between 120 and 121 BPM?
Hardly, according to Wikipedia's Metronome article. By our sum each beat at 121 is 4.1 ms shorter than the 500 ms of 120, and only after a full minute has 121 pulled one whole beat ahead.
Is 121 BPM still moderato?
Not by Wikipedia's list of tempo markings: its Moderato, Allegretto and Allegro moderato each end on 120, so 121 is the first whole tempo beyond them. A 20th-century German dial pictured in German Wikipedia's Tempo article draws the same line. Both call their figures approximate.
How fast is animato on a metronome?
From 116 to 126 on a present-day Japanese metronome pictured in German Wikipedia's Tempo article, which sets 121 at the centre of the band, five beats from either end. Wikipedia's English list of tempo markings has no Animato; there 121 is Allegro (120 to 156).
How do note lengths at 121 BPM compare with 120?
Each is slightly shorter, by our sums: an eighth note 247.9 ms against 250 ms, a triplet eighth 165.3 ms against 166.7 ms, a sixteenth 124 ms against 125 ms and a dotted eighth 371.9 ms against 375 ms.
Why can't I hear the metronome?
If nothing sounds, the phone is the first suspect: its ring switch, its volume, or a Bluetooth speaker that has taken the click. The pad needs no sound to keep time, because its two dots take turns on every beat.