This is a command-line Java metronome app that features speed, gap and timed clicks. It was made for musicians (drummers especially) who have an affinity for the command-line environment and love to practice in an organised way (like me B-D).
It basically allows a musician to specify a (metronome-based) practice routine as command-line arguments and then it plays that routine in order as specified.
This application is supposed to fulfil the following requirements:
- play a click track for a specified number of minutes, to train endurance.
- play a click track for a certain amount of time, and then stay quiet for certain amount of time periodically, to train groove and time.
- play a click track which increases in tempo after a certain amount of time, to train control at various tempos.
- play a series of these metronomes, and leave some time between each for practice breaks.
The way I designed this app was as follows:
This feature takes in the following parameters: tempo, measure and duration.
This means that a musician would play to this metronome for duration minutes. That's it.
This feature takes in the following parameters: start tempo, end tempo, tempo length, tempo increment and measure.
This means that a musician would play to this metronome starting from start tempo bpm, and it gradually increases the tempo by tempo increment bpms every after tempo length measures, until it reaches end tempo bpm (or greater).
This feature takes in the following parameters: loud measures, silent measures, gap length increment, gap repetitions, tempo, measure and duration.
This means that a musician would play to this metronome with silent measures increasing by gap lenght increment measures every after gap repetitions measures. All this happens for duration minutes.
This app had some other features it was supposed to fulfil (in GUI form) such as:
- Progress tracker
- Routine Generator
- Click track maker (for out-of-app use as .mp3 files or something)
- Play Along/Loop repository access
- "Drum Toasts" (short, informative and/or entertaining messages contributed by the drummer/music community worldwide)
This application was to be a GUI application from the start but developing it needed time to think. So, I launched this version instead (I really needed this metronome for my kind of practice. No one out there had it for free, so I built my own B-D). Get it now. I want this metronome to revolutionize musician's practice everywhere and become the ultimate tool for musicians to get better at what they do. I realise that there's still alot to be desired in this application, and any contributions would greatly be appreciated.