Once you can use a metronome, how can you use it to help you do more than just play faster? Or worse, just more like a metronome?

Ed Friedland, who was once my teacher, once wrote an excellent article on how to improve your time using a metronome. If you don't have that article, start here.

Two key aspects of your time feel are your subdivision of time and where you place your downbeats. Subdivision is the easier of the two concepts. In 4/4, the basic division of the measure is into four beats. These can be subdivided into eighth notes, sixteenths, triplets, etc. Most rock beats subdivide the beat in two: into eighth notes. Funk tends to subdivide each beat into sixteenths, and swing subdivides the beat into triplets. As a bassist, you want to have such a clear sense of time that you can subdivide it into any of these, as well as odd numbers -- quintuplets and septuplets -- and to be able to accent your subdivisions as needed. How can you work this into your bag of tricks?

Practice.DUH!