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127th AES Convention Coverage (New York, NY Oct. 9-12)
PRESS RELEASE
Bounce Metronome Pro Released — with Swing, Syncopation, Polyrhythms and Drum Stick Visuals
April 30, 2009
Advertisement This metronome uses bounces to help you keep in time, just as conductors often do. It's especially easy to clap or play in time with the bounces of a ball when it hits the ground. Bounce Metronome Pro can show bounces following any rhythm, as a drum stick, ball or baton. This innovative metronome with gravity bounce visuals has just been released by Robert Inventor. This bounce idea was also used in the early "Car-tune" silent movies (as well as some of the first movies with sound) - a ball bounced on the lyrics to help the audience sing along. In fact Bounce Metronome Pro has an option to show a ball bouncing on lyrics as well, like the early movies. With this innovation, the visuals become primary, and you can anticipate the exact moment of an irregular beat visually. It is like having your own personal conductor to help you keep in time. Bounce Metronome Pro exploits these new irregular beat possibilities to the full. You can use it with any amount of swing, as used in jazz, scottish fiddle music, the notes inégal of early French music, etc. Or if swing isn't your thing, you may still find it easier to play along with a metronome with a gentle lilt to it, to give a natural feel to the rhythm. Of course you can play the regular ticks of a conventional metronome too. You can also practice many rhythms not often found in metronomes such as syncopated rhythms and polyrhythms (up to 16 rhythms played simultaneously with any number of notes for each one). You can also practice unusual time signatures like 5/4, 7/4 etc split, as for instance 7/4 as 4+3 / 4 or 3+4 /4 etc. or play the more complex additive rhythms such as 3+2+3 /8 . With all these rhythms you can set the visuals to bounce following conducting patterns as well. But that doesn't begin to exhaust the range of possibilities in Bounce Metronome Pro. More generally, you can practice the long cycles of different rhythms used in some styles of music. You can make your cycle from any of these rhythms and polyrhythms one after another. You can even practice rhythms based on PHI (the golden ratio) and other "truly irrational numbers" (so you have PHI beats to the bar, so the beats drift with respect to the bar line). This PHI rhythm is of particular interest as it is in a sense the "most polyrhythmic" possible rhythm. Yet with all these advanced options available if you need them, it's simple intuitive interface makes it easy to use. You will be able to get started right away. For the most used rhythms, you just click the button for your preset rhythm. Then adjust the tempo using the handy dial. Or if you prefer to do it that way, just tap on the dial with the right button a few times at the desired tempo for your rhythm. There's another handy feature which many metronome users will appreciate. You can practice gradual tempo changes, or set the tempo to increase gradually perhaps over several minutes to assist with learning a difficult piece. You can set how much to increase the tempo by, and how long the tempo change will take in minutes or seconds. For those who need it, you can also add extra tempo changes, any number, one after another. Here is a novel feature for a metronome (as far as I know anyway): Bounce Metronome Pro can play dance rhythms with mixes of notes of different value e.g. eighth notes mixed with dotted quarter notes and so forth. There's a drop list of preset example rhythms to get you started such as Waltz, Original Tango rhythm (dos por cuatro) etc. You can also combine several such rhythms played simultaneously on different instruments, with different stereo pan locations etc. One particularly useful application of this: you can play the two sticks of a paradiddle panned left and right as RLRRLRLL etc. The drum stick visuals will be synchronised with the rhythm, for instance with a separate stick for the left and right parts for a paradiddle. You can tap out the entire rhythm (or rhythms) for the metronome too, using the PC keyboard or mouse. Or adjust the times and volumes of beats individually. You can also get a rhythm from a recording - click on the beats in the display of the recording to set the metronome times. Bounce Metronome Pro is accessible to blind musicians. There's a special interface designed for use with a screen reader (tested with Jaws, Window Eyes, Thunder and Microsoft Narrator), and if you are blind you can play all the same rhythms. Indeed you can use most of the the same features too - the only ones not accessible to blind users are the gravity bounce visuals of course, and that feature to get the beats from a visual display of a recording. For those who can see but have impaired vision, all the visuals are customisable. They are also designed to work effectively for users who are colour blind or need high contrast visuals. You can use any of the instruments on your soundcard or other midi instruments, melodic or non melodic, because it plays the notes via midi. You can also use its Wave Shape Player which comes with a menu of preset instruments and it has C-Sound capabilities too, with its automated C-Sound orchestra builder. It has melodic features too. Randomly generate a tune using fractals, to get an idea of the way your rhythm sounds melodically. Or play the intriguing and harmonious polyrhythmic harmonic metronomes - based on the harmonic series. All within a simple to use program with all the main features easily accessible and clearly set out. It has a clean, hot highlighted, skinnable, modern user interface.  (Click for close-up)Recent Bounce Metronome Pro headlines
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