Drummer

Rather than simply playing along with a metronome, you can also play along with the built in drummer.

As long as your song has a valid tempo and time signature set (in the Edit song page), the app will be able to create a drummer for you using a default beat.  If that wasn't enough, you can also create your own custom drum beats for each time signature and assign them to songs.

The drummer can be controlled using a footpedal, page button, etc. but also using the built in player controls.

Each drum track has four parts:

• 'Main beat' - the default beat when starting the drummer

• 'Variation beat' - a variation of the main beat that you can transition to.  This could be used for a chorus, etc.

• 'Main fill' - the fill bar that can be called when playing the main beat

• 'Variation fill' the fill bar that can be called when playing the variation beat

When a fill or transition is called, a cymbal is automatically played on the first beat of the following bar.

Drummer player

The drummer player popup (draggable) can be used to play different drum parts if you do not want to use custom assignable controls (foot pedal, page buttons, etc.)

The buttons from left to right show

• play/stop

• fill

• transition

• open the sequencer

Drum sequencer

If you want to have a go at creating your own custom drum beat, you can use the sequencer.  You can edit each of the 4 parts (main, variation, main fill, variation fill).  One limitation is that each part is 1 full bar long.

Each custom beat you create must be saved with a sensible filename and valid time signature.  These will be stored in your OpenSong/Drummer/ folder.  Each drum file created will be stored against the time signature used when it is created.

You can choose to assign the saved drum file to the currently viewed song using the sequencer window and can choose the tempo and preferred drum kit.  These values can also be set when using the Edit song page.

To add or change the volume of a beat, simply click on the grid.  Repeatedly clicking on the grid will cycle through the default velocities (Off, 50, 75, 100, 127).  You can remove beats quickly by long pressing on the grid.

When saving files, the app will append the time signature to the filename.  The files are saved as .json files.  E.g. a file named 'Double beat' created in 4/4 time signature will actually be saved with the filename Double beat_4_4.json.

The toolbar at the bottom of the sequencer has the following actions in order:

• play/stop

• reset - create a built in default beat for the chosen time signature

• clear - delete all beats in the current sequencer object

• save - save the drum beats to a file so you can allocate it to a song (or multiple songs)

• load - load a previously created drum file

• assign - set the currently loaded song to use the drum file being viewed (as long as you have saved it first)