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Anytune with airturn3/7/2023 Here’s an excellent tool for any music teachers looking to give their students a little extra practice reading rhythms. Clapping shouldn’t be this hard, or this fun. Composed over 40 years ago, this piece is still relevant for all percussionists, and the app provides a very supportive and unique method of challenging and teaching the user how to play this hypnotic piece. The app has a “space invaders of rhythm” layout and accurately detects when you tap the correct rhythms. Quite possibly the most challenging, fun, engaging, and unique app out there, ClappingMusic by Steve Reich is an app designed to teach users how to play along to his seminal avant garde piece “Clapping Music.” The nature of the composition is that two performers play the same pattern, while one player shifts the pattern one beat at a time, putting the two players out of phase, until eventually syncing back up with the fixed player. ![]() Furthermore, users can mute any instrument they choose and there are accompanying videos of the artists actually performing the parts! This is a most excellent addition to any percussion curriculum. ![]() The app comes with an index of patterns, the various parts charted out, and each rhythm is performed by world-renowned musicians. And now, the learning just got even easier with PercussionTutor, a great resource for learning all the basic Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms. Back in my day, we had to walk three hours, uphill, in the snow, just to get our samba on. Want to learn a Brazilian style of music? No problem, just go online and watch videos. The Erskine Essentials just conquered the market of “music minus drums.” Someone get this man an award for making superior play-along apps that don’t sound like 1985 Casio keyboard demo modes. All apps are intended for intermediate to advanced drummers, with plenty of challenging material densely packed into each one. The collection covers a variety of genres, including two jazz play-alongs, an Afro-Cuban play-along featuring Aaron Serfaty, a Code Of Funk app (basically David Garibaldi’s book Code Of Funk in app form), and Joy Luck, a play-along version of Erskine’s album of the same name. The strength of these apps is that they offer play-along tracks of top-notch performances, superior audio fidelity, mixing abilities to mute various instruments, and accompanying charts for drums, percussion, piano, lead sheets, and so on. Time-keeping has never been easier.Įrskine Essentials is a collection of five apps designed specifically to aid the drummer in the experience of playing along to music. Additionally, you can create set lists and arrange the orders of each of the saved tempos. What takes this app out of the garage and onto the stage, however, is its ability to program and save different tempos and label them with song names. Its Rhythm Trainer function can randomly mute the metronome to designated lengths, and there’s a Practice Mode that allows for automated tempo changes, much like a workout routine, so drummers can run exercises at various buildups of tempos without having to stop between sets to adjust the metronome. This app, however, goes above and beyond the usual bleep-and-bloop of a metronome, and also performs as a coach and stage tool. ![]() Previously featured, it still wins Best Of Show for a variety of reasons, most notably that it produces tones that are harsh and piercing enough to cut through the cacophony of drumming, including those same obnoxious tones from the soon-to-be-vintage Tama Rhythm Watch. Starting with a drummer’s most valuable accessory, the metronome (sorry, glam rockers, hair gel didn’t place first), EUMLab’s Pro Metronome is a sturdy and drummer-friendly app that rises far above the typical dregs of the mostly flimsy metronome apps that otherwise muddy the market. ![]() Here at DRUM! we got lost, ran out of water, fought off venomous snakes and angry tigers, and circumvented the cannibalistic natives - all for the sake of culling the best, most useful, and most interesting apps into an eclectic and necessary compendium every drummer can benefit from. Unfortunately, there are so many apps out there it can be maddening trying to hack through the digital jungle that is the Apple App Store. From page-turning chart programs for cellists to mixing-board controllers for engineers, the mobile music app industry is all grown up now and ready for full-time employment. Now, in 2016, music apps have matured, become reliably useful, and in some cases, are more advantageous than their expensive PC counterparts. A few years later the market grew into its gawky phase, offering valuable musical apps while still feeling a bit handicapped and babied, much like teenage interns. Six years ago the app market was a young tech toddler, clumsily stumbling around the block with chintzy music programs that were borderline useless.
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