How it works
An 8/4 time signature metronome counts the quarter note, eight to a bar. This one opens at 150 with beats one and five marked: Wikipedia's list of works in unusual time signatures notes that 8/4 may be evenly divided.
Read the full guide
Start
Tap the pad, or press Space. The highest click is beat one; beat five rises a little and the other six are plain. Tap a second time and it stops.
Change the tempo
Tap the number under the pad and type a quarter-note tempo if 150 is not yours, or reach it with minus and plus. The bar stays eight beats long at every speed.
Questions and answers
Is 8/4 the same as two bars of 4/4?
In notes, yes: eight quarter notes either way. The barline differs. Open Music Theory says the first beat of a measure may be felt as weightier than the others; in 8/4 that beat comes once in eight, so this pad lifts beat five less.
Is 8/4 a common time signature?
Not on paper. A note in Wikipedia's list of works in unusual time signatures calls the evenly divided eight arguably extremely common and the notation 8/4 uncommon. Most of its 8/4 entries are single bars or short passages, one in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.
Can 8/4 be grouped 3+2+3?
It can. The same list has a symphony with two bars of 8/4 divided three, two, three. This page clicks the even division only, so in a bar like that its lift on beat five is misplaced; keep to beat one.
What is the difference between 8/4 and 8/8?
The note that carries the count, and on these pages the stress as well. A click here is a quarter note and the bar falls in two even halves. On the 8/8 page a click is an eighth note, stressed three, three and two.
Why can't I hear the metronome?
Usually the phone is muted somewhere: at its ring switch, at a volume of zero, or by Bluetooth headphones that are still paired. None of that stops the eight dots, which light one after another with the first and fifth larger.