I try to make it a habit of using a metronome to do some scales and speed drills 2 or 3 days out of the week. The problem I am running into is that I can play faster now so I am trying to get into the practice of picking 2 or 4 notes for every one beat of the metronome. I get to a point as I am working up slowly to my fastest speed where I can no longer tell if I am staying in time. It gets all jumbled up. Is this a common problem? And do I now need to just keep working at it to develop my ear better. I have seen players like Petrucci give an example of a scale with a metronome and it is amazing to me that he can actually say that he is in time with the metronome because it is so amazingly fast he seems to be playing like 8 billion notes for every one beat on the metronome.