Accelerator
Why Accelerate?
Often, a practicing musician will want to play a difficult phrase or section of music at a slow, easy tempo, and then very gradually build up to the correct faster tempo. Now, without having to stop, take your hands off your instrument, adjust the speed, and start again, the Accelerator will do that for you.
Open the Accelerator by going to the 'Window' menu and choosing "Show Accelerator", or by typing 'A' on your keyboard. The Accelerator will count bars according to the bell setting. So if you have the bell set to '4', then for the purposes of the Accelerator, a bar is 4 beats. At the setting shown in the picture, the tempo will increase by the amount you have set (3 bpm in the picture) after 12 measures, or 36 beats. Acceleration of the tempo will stop when the bpm reaches the amount set in the other small text field (320 bpm in this case) and the metronome will continue at that tempo.
If you want the Accelerator to slow the Metronome down, simply add a '-' (minus, or subtract) symbol before the value in the field where you set the amount to accelerate.
You can have the Accelerator play a sound whenever it accelerates and a different sound when it reaches maximum speed. You can turn these sounds on or off in the Preferences.
You turn the Accelerator on simply by opening it's window. To stop the Accelerator, close it's window.
If you find the Accelerator is making the tempo faster than you'd like you can lower the tempo while Metronome is still running. Of course, you can also speed it up, too.
NB: If the bell is set to zero, ie, no bell, then the Accelerator will use as a bar length the value you have set in Preferences. See the Preferences page for more.
Auto Pilot
Auto Pilot reverses an acceleration after it reaches it's maximum (or minimum) tempo. When Auto Pilot is on, Metronome plays and accelerates according to the settings you have made in the Accelerator until it reaches the maximum tempo, then reverses acceleration until you arrive back at the start tempo. Clicking the "Auto Pilot on" checkbox reveals a text field where you tell it how many bars to play at the maximum tempo before reversing. Any number above zero will work. This feature is primarily for use by drummers practicing drills.