Would anyone with an Android smart phone be willing to beta test a metronome app I’m working on? It is still a work in progress and there are a lot more features that need to be added. No musical knowledge is required! At this point I’m only looking to try it out on a few different devices (I only have two at my disposal) to make sure there aren’t any glaring problems with it before adding more features to it. However, if we have musicians here I’m definitely open to feature and design suggestions!
I’ve changed the way my metronome app is installed and it is now available through the google play store as a beta version. The installation process is a lot better and simpler than the previous manual APK install.
Shouldn’t the third control of the third menu be the “beat subdivision” rather than “bar subdivision?” The bar sub division is contained in the time signature, but you would normally have a beat subdivision that you would use to, for example, play triplets or quintuplets.
Hi quew8, thanks for your feedback. I will be adding the option to switch the subdivision between “beats” or “bars”, so it’ll be able to do both.
I went with bar subdivision for now because a key feature of my metronome is being able to play polyrhythms (for example, playing 3 beats against 4 beats where both of the “1” beats line up) which is easier to setup with subdivisions over the bar. You can still get beat subdivision in the mean time with straight forward math such as 43=12 notes per bar for triplets, 45=20 notes per bar for quintuplets, etc but I will be adding the option to do both before the official release. Thanks again!
quew8, you are right that it is beats in a bar. It takes one measure of the time signature (say 4/4) and then subdivides it into how ever many notes you want (8 notes, or 13 notes, etc). When inputting normal time signatures with no subdivision then it is a mirror of the time signature. For example, for a 7/8 time signature the three controls would be 7, 8, and 7. This isn’t ideal for working with normal time signatures, but it’ll be easier when the other controls are added to give more options. Thanks again!
UPDATE: I have changed the installation to go through the google play store as a beta version. It’s much easier to install and try out now that there is no more awful manual APK installation!
Thanks for the links you provided in the PM. I was able to install the Metronome.apk file directly in the Emulator provided by AndroidStudio and run the program. My emulator is running as a Nexus 5 API 22.
Nice choice of sound. As far as I can tell the tempo is rock steady. The basic look of the Metronome is nice, and the animation of the pendulums works perfectly well. Congratulations!
I’m not clear what the blue glows do yet. Perhaps this is something yet to be implemented?
The numbers for the beats are a bit awkward to edit. For some reason I can’t use my keyboard “Del” but only the “Backspace” for editing. That could have more to do with the clumsiness of emulators than anything else. The first two numbers seem to affect tempo more than they are actual time signatures. Once they are real time signatures, you should probably eliminate the possibility of putting crazy numbers in the denominator. For example 4:3 makes no sense as there is no 1/3 note in between a half note and a quarter note (crotchet).
Also, 3:4 runs faster than 4:4, but I was expecting the “quarter” note of each to be the same length. If there are 60 beats per minute, and the middle control is the denominator of the time signature, that value (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64) should be the note value that occurs 60 times in the minute.
When the program is paused and resumed, there is a burst of activity, as if the beats which weren’t heard during the pause all played in quick succession.
When adding a sound (a second metronome), the edits I made to the first are lost and revert to 4:4:4.
Eventually, there will be a way to load/save a more complicated beat?
Hi Phil, wow…thank you for your detailed suggestions. I appreciate it!
It’s great to hear that the audio timing and pendulum animations worked for you as these are the things I mainly wanted to test at this point. Everything else is still very much a work in progress and will be getting tweaked a lot.
The blue glow buttons don’t do anything yet, but they will eventually be the “power buttons” to enable or disable the settings in each section.
My Android phone only has a backspace key, so maybe Android doesn’t recognize the delete key? When running the desktop version from within Eclipse the delete key works. I just finished making my own keyboard that only has number, enter, backspace, and cancel buttons. It also automatically overwrites the previous number when the control is initially selected so it doesn’t have to be cleared before entering a new value.
The controls are real time signatures, but for normal time signatures (with no subdivision) you also have to set the subdivision to be the same as the numerator in the time signature. This is probably why 3/4 played faster than 4/4. If the three controls in the “sound” section are 3, 4, 4 then it takes one measure of 3/4 divides it into 4 notes. However, setting those controls to 3, 4, 3 will give the actual 3/4 time signature and it should line up perfectly with 4, 4, 4. This will be modifies eventually so that the subdivision control will be able to select between subdividing by beats or by bars and disabling (and hiding) the subdivision control entirely.
There will be a dropdown list that has the common denominator values for standard time signatures, but I’m also leaving the option to enter in your own values manually as irrational meters do technically exist, even if they are not common:
I want to allow for anything the user may want to try without imposing my own limitations on it. Most metronomes only allow you to select certain values from a drop down list for both the top and bottom numbers, whereas in mine you can input a custom time signature of 23/13 if you want and it will play it. This is a new concept I have not seen yet in any of the metronomes I’ve looked at.
You will be able to customize sounds for creating compound meters as there will be controls to edit each individual beat in the measure. You will be able to change the sound file, volume for accents/grace notes, and enable/disable certain beats to create rhythmic patterns.
That “burst of notes” bug you described also happens occasionally while changing settings during runtime as well. I think I can fix this bug during the pause as LiGDX has methods for handing the pause state, which I haven’t implemented yet. But I’m not sure what’s causing the runtime bug to happen yet.
The settings are lost because right now it’s removing and recreating many of the objects when new sounds are generated. This was a quick approach just while I was getting everything going, but this will be changed so it can save and recall settings.
