This is a simple metronome and timer app I wrote to help me work through Stick Control by George Stone.
Note that the exercises in the book are notated in cut time (2/2). Since I want to use this tool for other practice exercises, I have chosen to measure bars in terms of quarter notes instead of half-notes which is a little more convenient for practising along to music in 3/4, for example. Similarly, tempo is defined here in terms of quarter notes per minute.
“Preroll” refers to one or more pickup bars that run immediately before the first exercise in order for the user to gauge the correct tempo to play at. The page will flash an angry red colour when you hit the last bar of the last repetition of each exercise in order to alert you that the next exercise is coming up.
Written by Richard Cook
The pattern field defines the pattern of accents of the metronome clicks. This will be a string whose length is beats × subdivisions where each character represents the click type to generate at the corresponding step:
| Character | Sound |
|---|---|
| A | Strong accent |
| B | Weak accent |
| C | No accent |
| D | Silent (no click) |
The pattern will be truncated and padded to the correct number of steps and any unsupported characters will be ignored and replaced with silence.
Space can be pressed to start and stop the metronome. If you stop the metronome beyond the first exercise, you will be presented with a prompt allowing you to stop or resume the metronome and timer from the beginning of the current exercise with a fresh run of preroll bars—this is useful when your practice routine is interrupted by a phone call or a dog in desperate need of a belly rub.