SongPartTrackingMetronome
A simple visual and acoustic metronome with bar-based song part tracking capabilities
SongPartTrackingMetronomeA simple visual and acoustic metronome with bar-based song part tracking capabilities |
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SongPartTrackingMetronome is a simple programmable visual and acoustic metronome with bar-based song part tracking capabilities that guide the user through a song.
It can help individuals and/or bands to keep track of the parts of a song while playing through them.
SongPartTrackingMetronome is especially useful in songwriting either alone or together with a band and in rehearsing and practicing newly created songs or song parts, whose order within the song has not yet been fully memorized.
The SongPartTrackingMetronome program is just a single executable file (`SongPartTrackingMetronome.exe') and requires no installation. It requires no external libraries or other frameworks to be installed.
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, 8, 10 (64bit); Linux/Mac/BSD (runnable and tested with Wine).
Screen Resolution: A minimum of 1280 x 720 pixels of screen resolution is necessary.
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| Screenshot 1:The screen after the program has been started. The songstructure field shows the last saved songstructure of the last program run. | Screenshot 2: Saved songstructure list is open. The last played/edited song structure is always at the bottom of the list. | Screenshot 3: Count in the number of beats at the beginning of the song. | Screenshot 4: The sixth repetition of part A is being played. We are currently at the first beat of the fourth bar of this repetition (the first beat of each bar flashes green, the others flash red). |
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| Screenshot 5: Beats other than the first one flash in red. This helps to keep the orientation for when the next bar comes. The number of bars still to do for this repetition are written on the right of the |. | Screenshot 6: We are in regular (infinity) metronome mode, with the bar counting feature activated. This mode can help us to count the lengths of the parts we are later going to use in the song structure. | Screenshot 7: Just the regular (infinity) metronome running, with emphasis on the first beat (can be deactivated, so that every beat is the same). Here SongPartTrackingMetronome basically acts as a regular acoustic and visual metronome. |
The helptext, which is also included within the program after download, explains how these songstructures work:
Song structures
---------------A song structure has the following format:
[Songname:]<PartName>/<BarLengthOfPart>=<RepeatsOfPart>,...[#BPM;[BEAT]]A song part in the context of this program is a riff or a repeated phrase of your musical composition. What a song part concretely means is entirely up to you. Use it as it makes sense to you. A song part name is a maximum of 3 characters long, so you'll have to use abbreviations that you and your band members understand. It is recommended that you keep track of the meanings of your abbreviated song part names on a white board or on a separate screen with a program such as MS Word in your rehearsal room, so that everyone in the band knows what the abbreviated part names mean when SongPartTrackingMetronome shows them on the large screen display.
When the metronome is running, the large screen display shows the song part name followed by a colon, followed by the number of repetitions still to be played for this song part, followed by a pipe character, followed by the bars still to be played for this repetition of the currently played song part. Each of these bar counts at the end lasts as long as the number of ticks given in the beat setting next to the bpm setting on the left hand side of the screen.
If <RepeatsOfPart> in the song structure format above is set to -1, the part is played indefinitely which can be great for song writing and trying things out if you don't know how long the song part will be yet. You can use the count bars feature in the Infinity mode to count the bars of a song part repition and use the number you get in the song structure that you're creating.
[Songname:] and [#BPM[;BEAT]] in the song structure format above are optional.
The [#BPM[;BEAT]] section at the end of the song structure format is called the global bpm/beat modifier of the song.
A song part itself can be a bpm/beat modifier which carries no song structural meaning, but which changes the bpm and/or beat at this particular point of the song. This is a feature so that the song can change its beat/bpm in anywhere in the middle. A beat/bpm song modifier part has the same format as the global bpm/beat modifier of the song but is prefixed with a + instead of with a # and is placed in the song structure the same way a regular song part would be.
See the provided example song structures for more details on this. The example song structures appear on the first program start if no .songstructures file is present.
Saving song structures
----------------------A song structure is saved to the .songstructures file if the entire song has been played through or if the user presses Ctrl+B. See the circumstantially updated instructions below the song structure text field on the main screen.
Tips on managing your song structure list
-----------------------------------------Keep your song structure drop down list clean by deleting old unused song structures from it by selecting them with an arrow key and by hitting Ctrl+D on that selection. The song structure will be removed from the list (as well as from the .songstructures file). The number of maximum song structures that can be kept in the list is fixed at 30.
A bug report should loosely contain the following information: a simple description of the fault, program output and error code if appropriate, directions on how to reproduce the bug.
A feature request should provide a thorough description about what this feature is supposed to address and why you think it should be added.
As of this version, SongPartTrackingMetronome has entirely been conceived and written by Sören Wellhöfer <soeren.wellhoefer@gmail.com>.
The usual intellectual property copyright laws apply (see Eula when first running the program).
You are welcome to contact the author for comments, bug reports, wishes/suggestions, and contribution offerings/requests.