How Drumbook works

What Drumbook does

What is inside Drumbook.

Both hands on the sticks, none to turn the page

Sheet music comes in pages, and a drummer who is playing cannot turn one. So Drumbook cuts the staves out of your PDF and stacks them across the full width: one continuous ribbon instead of separate pages. Page turning stops being a problem, because there are no pages left.

It finds the staves on its own, by their signature of five evenly spaced lines. That works on printed sheets as well as on photographed ones, and up to about three degrees it straightens a crooked page first.
Section names, bar numbers and repeat marks stay with the music. Sideways the cut goes out to the last bit of ink rather than to the edge of the paper, and between two staves it lands exactly where nothing is written.
On an iPad a stave becomes a good two times the size it has on paper, on an iPhone held sideways about one and a half. Held upright it gains no size, but it gains calm: no margins, no page turns, every stave in the same place.
The screen stays awake while the music is open. Otherwise it goes dark in the second bar.
When the detection isn't sure, it says so and shows the printed page rather than building a ribbon with a stave missing. A switch takes you back to the original page at any time anyway.

And it follows along while you play: to the click or to the music from your library. One button starts either. With music playing, you tap twice on the stave you are playing; from then on Drumbook knows where the song starts and how fast it goes, and asks once whether it fits. For pieces with repeats and jumps you set where it continues under "Fine-tuning". It is all stored in beats rather than seconds: set at 90, it still fits at 130.

The ribbon: the first five staves of a score stacked as one continuous strand, with bar numbers intact, and a switch at the top between ribbon and printed page.

The same ribbon on an iPad held sideways: five staves across the full width, the song title and its place in the setlist above, the linked track and the tempo of 82 BPM below. — The same score on an iPad held sideways, the way the device sits on a music stand. A stave here becomes a good two times the size it has on paper. Along the bottom the track from your own library plays, with the tempo beside it; once the click runs, the outline moves from stave to stave with it.

The clock thinks along

A session isn't an alarm, it's a running order. You set how long you have altogether; every exercise gets its own share. Two countdowns run at once: one for the exercise, one for the whole evening.

It moves on by itself after a short break, with a sound and a tap you can feel. No need to touch the phone.
Overrunning is allowed. Staying longer on one exercise doesn't steal time from the others; the remaining time counts honestly.
A quick verdict afterwards: the tempo you reached and a rating per exercise, plus one for the evening.

A click that doesn't drift

The metronome writes every beat into the audio ahead of time instead of trusting a timer. That's why it's still where it should be ten minutes in. And every exercise remembers its own setting.

Every beat on its own: accented, normal or silent. Subdivisions up to sextuplets.
Tap the tempo, raise it automatically, or stop after a set number of bars.
Silent bars for timing: the click drops out, you keep playing, and when it returns you hear whether you're still on it.
Keeps running with the screen locked, and can be worked from there.

The metronome at 100 BPM with four beat lights, a start button, tap tempo, and settings for beats per bar, subdivision, automatic tempo and silent bars.

What your teacher said is still there next week

For every lesson you note what it was about and how your teacher judged it. The exercises they set go straight into the library, and the generator knows they take precedence.

Collect questions the moment they come up while practising. At the next lesson they're at the top of the screen.
Sheet music with it: photographed, scanned or as a PDF, along with voice notes from the lesson.
A PDF report shows your teacher what has actually happened since the last lesson.

The lessons screen: two open questions for the teacher, and below them three lessons with date, rating, summary and the number of exercises set.

What else is in there

Preparing a session: a 30-minute budget, all 30 allocated, with the running order of three exercises and their minutes below.

The practice list writes itself

Tell Drumbook how many minutes you have. The generator does the rest. It pulls in what has been left alone too long, makes sure the same topic doesn't come round three times, and lets the important things through first.

The history with a bar chart of the last 14 days, and below it time by category: rudiments 2 hours 6 minutes, songs 1 hour 22 minutes, groove, independence and fills.

Proof that it's going somewhere

Every session lands in the history. After a few weeks you can see in black and white how much you practised, where the time went, and where the tempo actually rose.

A song in the library: “Come Together” at 82 of 82 BPM, with a Music section below showing the linked track “Come Together” by The Beatles from Apple Music.

Play along with the original

A song is only really there once it holds up against the record. Attach the actual track to an exercise or a song: from your own library, the Apple Music titles in it included. You start it from the sheet music, and a hard passage you mark and play on a loop.

The library sorted by category: rudiments with five exercises, each with its state, when it was last practised and a tempo bar.

Your exercises, in order

The library holds it all together: what the exercise is for, the tempo you're aiming at, where you stand, when it last came up. Songs are kept apart; they shouldn't flood the practice list.

And besides

The small things that matter day to day.

Material on the exercise

Scan or photograph sheet music, import PDFs, record voice notes, keep links. While you practise it's all one tap away: sheet music as a ribbon, everything else zoomable full screen.

Reminders that fit

Daily at a set time, or only once you've been away from the kit for a number of days you choose yourself. No nagging.

Setlists for rehearsal

Songs in the order of the night, each with its own tempo and its own recording. Played through, the sheet stands large, the buttons are made for hands holding sticks, and the screen stays awake. No clock, no rating: a rehearsal is not a practice session.

Export and backup

A PDF report for your teacher. And a complete backup as a file that can be read back in, with attachments and without deleting anything in the process.

Practise freely

No plan, no practice list: just sit down and play. The clock counts up or down, at the end you write down what happened, and it counts like any other session.

Help where you are

There's a question mark on every screen. Behind it isn't a manual, but an explanation of exactly what's in front of you.

Upright, sideways, iPhone, iPad

The same journal, whichever way you hold it.

At the kit a device sits differently than it does on the sofa: propped on a music stand, flat beside the hi-hat, sideways on your knee. So every screen is built for both orientations, and on iPad it is not simply bigger, it is laid out differently.

An iPad upright on a music stand: the first staves of the score as one ribbon across the full width, with the linked track and the tempo below. — **iPad, upright.** A whole piece on one screen: thirteen staves without turning a single page. This is how it stands on the music stand when you play a piece from start to finish.

Drumbook on an iPad in portrait: the tabs across the top, then the week's practice time, “Start practising”, the suggested practice list and the open questions for the teacher. — **More room, less scrolling.** On iPad the tabs sit at the top rather than the bottom, and the week's time, the practice list and your questions for the teacher are all visible at once; on iPhone they come one after another.

A running session on an iPhone in landscape: countdown, pause and next on the left, metronome and running order on the right. — **iPhone, sideways.** While you practise, the clock with pause and next sits on the left, the metronome and the running order on the right, both visible at once, no scrolling. Exactly how the phone lies at the kit.

And it makes no difference which device you start on: iPhone and iPad keep in step through your own iCloud: exercises, sessions, sheet music, and since recently your settings too.

Your data

It all stays here.

Drumbook is an app with no way back out. It has no sign-in, no account and no server of mine holding your practice. That is not a setting you can switch; none of it is built in. When your devices keep in step, they do it through your own iCloud. What you practise is nobody else's business.

Your data, your iCloudExercises, sessions, notes and sheet music live on your device. If you have an iPhone and an iPad, they keep in step through your private iCloud: no account, no password, no server of mine in between. I cannot reach any of it.
Nothing is measuredThere are no analytics built in and no advertising identifier. I only get crash reports through Apple, while you test through TestFlight. It doesn't keep score of how you use it.
No account neededYou set no password and enter your address nowhere. Syncing uses the Apple account already on your device.
You can leave whenever you likeThe full backup is an open file that belongs to you. There's no hoard of data being kept back.

Where it stands

What's finished and what isn't.

Drumbook is a project out of a rehearsal room, not a company's product. Here is what already works and what is still to come.

Working and in daily use

Library, sessions with a running order and two clocks
Metronome with a count-in, including with the screen locked
Lessons, questions for the teacher, history with a chart
Material, reminders, setlists, practice-list generator
Practising freely: a session without a practice list, with a duration or counting up
The ribbon: the staves from your PDF, stacked across the full width
The ribbon follows the click or the music from your library
Mark a passage in a song and practise it on a loop
A photo to greet you, a different one every day
Writing on the sheet: strokes, sections and watch-out markers, with the Apple Pencil or a finger
PDF report with a summary on page 1, full backup with restore
Linking tracks from your library and playing them while you practise
Runs on iPhone and iPad, upright and sideways, in English and in German
Syncing between iPhone and iPad through your own iCloud, with no account and no sign-in
Sheet music in the middle of a session, including a photo from your practice book
The first test build on TestFlight, since 2 September
A guided first run, with six exercises to start from, if you have none yet
Testing is under way, and since 17 September beyond the closest circle

Still to come

The route to the App Store; until then TestFlight is the only way in
More feedback from drummers outside my own circle
Rests lasting several bars are still counted wrong by the ribbon
Split View alongside another app on iPad
The Apple Music catalogue and Spotify; for now only what is in your own library

Drumbook in detail.