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I’ve been looking for a decent iPhone metronome for a while now and I think I’ve finally found one.
It’s the called The Metronome by Soundbrenner and, at least at this point in time, it is a free app. I downloaded it yesterday and I think it’s pretty nice.
What I like about it is it’s flamenco friendly. It can be programmed be to have any time signature between 1/1 to 16/8 and each beat can be programmed to play one of three programmable sounds. Among the available sounds that can be assigned to a beat are a variety of basic woodblock and tick sounds, drum set sounds like kick, snare, and hi-hat, and, maybe most interesting for us, a selection of cajón sounds.
It can also be programmed to call out beats with a digital voice. For example, it can be programmed to count out a 12 beat compás in this manner:
I’ve never encountered that capability before in an app. Plus, you can save whatever you program into it for future use.
The user interface is very professional and unembellished, no silly skins or visual distractions. And it’s free, so can’t beat the price I think this one’s a keeper.
Posts: 482
Joined: May 6 2009
From: Iran (living in London)
RE: The Metronome by Soundbrenner (in reply to RobF)
Hi Rob,
Thanks for sharing this. I just downloaded the Android version. How does the programming work; say for example if you were to program it for 12 beat compass etc?
Posts: 482
Joined: May 6 2009
From: Iran (living in London)
RE: The Metronome by Soundbrenner (in reply to RobF)
Don't worry Rob; I figured it out. The voice counting sounds a tad off; or the digital voice may imply that impression! Or may be I'm just talking rubbish :)
RE: The Metronome by Soundbrenner (in reply to Argaith)
Hi Argaith, I’ve just been using this app for a day and I’m not associated with them in any way, but I think I can help you get started. I find the app is fairly intuitive but I did have to fiddle around for a bit the figure it out. I didn’t see any detailed instructions.
To access the programmable sounds, click Settings -> App Settings -> Sounds. This will bring you to an area where you can select from a list of sounds to assign to each of the three beat blocks at the top of the screen.
After you’ve set up the time signature, subdivision, BPM and song duration you can save it by going into Library -> Song Library and clicking Create Song. Once the song has been created it can be edited from within the library. I don’t know if the beat sounds are saved or not or if it’s just the beat information. One thing that’s interesting is the selection of subdivisions includes dotted notes and the like, it goes further than just allowing quarter notes, eighth notes and triplets, for instance.
I also find that the ability to define a song duration is useful for practicing certain techniques for a set period of time. Saves looking at your watch or a clock while practicing a repetitive pattern.
RE: The Metronome by Soundbrenner (in reply to Argaith)
quote:
Don't worry Rob; I figured it out.
OK. You type faster than me, but I typed more stuff, lol.
Glad you’ve figured it out. I think for a free app this is the best I’ve ever encountered. It’s better than the one I had paid for but had gone obsolete with IOS 10.