Beginner Metronome Exercise

As a music teacher, an area of practice that I often see students overlooking is rhythm. It's too easy to fool yourself into thinking that a song or solo sounds fine when you are playing alone. The problem arises when you start playing with other people and it becomes difficult to establish and maintain a rhythm. But luckily this is a problem that can be remedied! All you need is a metronome and as little as 10 minutes of time before each practice session to really lay a solid foundation for great rhythm.    
A common mistake that I see all the time in lessons is trying to play the piece too fast (myself included!) Often this comes from trying to get whatever you are playing to sound like the finished song. When you  play slow its hard to hear the familiarity in the song, this is where the comments like "it doesn't sound like anything," come from. But playing slow is important, it keeps us from practicing in mistakes, something that happens a lot when playing faster than our ability to cleanly execute the song . It comes down to that if you can't play it slow you won't be able to play it fast! Simple idea, but sometimes a tough one to incorporate into our practice.
Using a metronome with whatever songs you are practicing is a good idea but builing a solid rhythm foundation starts with something even simpler! 5 to 10 minutes of scales with a metronome done several times a week will really help you understand and feel rhythm.  Begin simple, by using a major scale  (any key) and setting your metronome on a nice moderate setting of 60 to 80 beats/minute.  Work with quarter notes then 1/8th notes and progressing onto triplets as your rhythm becomes stronger over time.  

We have included a diagram of a major scale pattern. This pattern can be played starting at any fret. The starting root note is played with your 2nd finger.  The Red circles represent the root notes in our video example we have used the 'A' Major scale. The first root note of this scale can be found on the  6th string, 5th fret. Then play the pattern accordingly.