A Practice Aid

:+1:
No problem.

2 Likes

Hey, if anyone is up for it or has any fitting drum loops to offer I wonā€™t decline.

Even thought about doing it myself, but that seemed just tedious. Also the drum track Iā€™d make would be quite boring.

@JerryP but I do. I donā€™t use copyrighted stuff on websites. As said - for private use thereā€™s no problem, but as soon as I make it public as I plan to itā€™s something you shouldnā€™t do.

2 Likes

So - you have to play the music in another app or however, but hereā€™s the practice website:
https://bass-scale-practice.firebaseapp.com/

I havenā€™t tested it properly, yet so if something does not work please do tell.

  • You can (de)select single scales. Shouldnā€™t pop up if deselected
  • You can set the time until it changes to a different scale
  • Should work on any device including smartphones (works on mine and itā€™s not the best or biggest screen)
  • Every change should be a new scale (Really random would mean it could be the same twice or even more often in a row)
  • You can switch between light and dark theme

What I still want to add is some kind of drumtrack or multiple drumtracks.

I experimented a bit and tried to add just a player in which one could load local audio files, but itā€™s surprisingly hard to play a file from your local computer in a website. Thereā€™s security stuff going on so others canā€™t find out the structure of your file system just because of a file upload.

P.S: stackblitz shuts the server down if no one uses the website. So the first visit could take a few moments until the server starts. Youā€™ll see a loading spinner in that case.

3 Likes

Please send me a copy also, thanks

windycity8010@gmail.com

1 Like

It seems to be working, just there is no audible sound, is there supposed to be?

I like it just fine. I discovered I am much better at finding notes then I thought, so I am happy about that, understanding full well I still have very fr to go beforeI would say I am good. Just better then I thought.

Thanks for doing this @JerryP and @juli0r

1 Like

Yeah, as said - there was still a problem regarding sound.
I didnā€™t have any royalty free drum tracks so I couldnā€™t implement a player. I did now, but itā€™s just the 120bpm version of the basic drumtrack I created.
Tests with playing a file from the local computer failed.

Currently I am creating ~1m drum tracks in reaper for different speeds. From 80-140 in 5bpm increments.

The idea is to have a BPM slider and then the correct drum backing track when it runs.

Other fixes I did:

  • Was possible to create a infinite loop when just selecting one scale
  • Sometimes the scales display was empty
  • The checkboxes now actually do something
  • moved hosting to firebase, quicker and less prototype-y: https://bass-scale-practice.firebaseapp.com/

The drumtrack I created sounds like this, very basic - open to suggestions, but I think it should be relatively straight and not too distracting. Also not a fan of fills in loops.
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/juliminecraft/bass-scale-practice@master/src/drumloops/basic_120_bpm.mp3
(120bpm version)

2 Likes

You are killing it. TYVM.

2 Likes

You are welcome. Actually I should have spent that time practicing bass instead of making a practice website, but once I started it went like it usually goes with private projects: ā€œoh and I need this. And that would be good.ā€ and so on. The actual programming didnā€™t even take long. Thatā€™s stuff Iā€™m used to. The creation of drumtracks and hosting it somewhere where it can be accessed was the time consuming part. Itā€™s not very modular, because I worked more in a rapid prototyping approach but I already had thoughts about extending this thing. Then Scales practice would be one module and thereā€™d be different training modules. But for now, for this scales practice I think I am finally finished and satisfied with the result: https://bass-scale-practice.web.app/ (itā€™s the same page as the link before, but a bit shorter and easier to remember)

  • changed drumkit samples for my beats - didnā€™t like them after all
  • 4 styles of basic drum loops: simple, pop rock, blues rock and dance
  • BPM Slider with increments of 5 (80-140BPM)
  • Attention: You have to stop and play again for ANY changes to take effect.

Shout if youā€™re missing a drum beat here. But as already said - I kept it very basic.

5 Likes

This just keeps getting better every time I check it. :+1:

2 Likes

Hi @JerryP,
Power point is ok :+1:
b.s.excavations@bigpond.com

Cheers brian

1 Like

Thanks. But now Iā€™m done! I mean I could group those checkboxes soā€¦ No! Iā€™m done!

Gotta focus on my other projects. Even skipped a lesson yesterday, because I was lost in the project. On the other hand I played around a bit more with drumbeats and that will come in handy on multiple occasions.

Yet I am still open to suggestions for different training aids. Or hear about your practice routine for inspiration/ideas that might assist it.

3 Likes

Create a Fund Me account so we can pay a little for your time, effort and CONTINUED EFFORT moving forward in case you wanna keep expanding on this very practice and extremely useful and helpful tool.
I think you, @juli0r and @JerryP might consider making it a a membership site, with monthly, reoccurring small payments, like $2.99usd to $4.99usd, with a one time all access pass for like $19.99usd and offer it up to the entire bass community.
Or develope it and fully polish it and sell the rights to Bass Buzz with a deal landing the two of you royalties.

Thatā€™s my suggestion or two.
Again, thanks guys, keep up the great work, itā€™s awessome.

You could incorporate things for ear tracks Ning as well if you do expand it to a commercial product.

What the frick? :astonished:
I canā€¦ I can build in a paypal donation button!? People who like to then could donate whatever they want to. Itā€™s meant as a free tool for the community. Yes, I do stuff like this professionally (no, actually more backend than frontend) but I also value the open source community as a programmer.
Really I rather make the code public (actually it already is on github) than try to go commercial with it. I still will take that as a compliment though. Seems Iā€™m not so bad at my job after all. Just kidding - I knew that Iā€™m not bad at all.

What do you mean by ā€œear tracksā€? Could you elaborate a bit on that?

2 Likes

There are apps that do this, I was thinking if you went for a commercial thing, that it would be a good added bonus feature, but like I said there are plenty of free and paid for apps doing this.

Like
MasterEarTraining
UCLA MusicTheory

Lots of others, @JoshFossgreen has covered this topic some and has some favorite websites and apps.

Again, I was thinking more for addition to a commercial product, but hey, if itā€™s something you want to add, it would be good to have it in the same wonderful place.

Ah something like that, okay. Iā€™ll have a look, but the basic principles seem fairly simple. Like ā€œplay soundā€ and give answer options. I just need a library of the same sound in different pitch and that should be easily achievable in reaper.

But Iā€™m still unsure about that. Then it becomes a ā€œgeneral music exerciseā€ and I could even add more tests like here: The Music Lab (determine off-key, out of rythm and stuff like that)

I couldnā€™t help myself and updated a few minor details:

  • checkboxes are grouped so de/selection of the groups is possible
  • donation button

I also looked a bit into how online tuner work and the snippet/prototype I build was fine with mic & voice, but as soon as I tested the bassā€¦ the frequencies are just so low that itā€™s harder to detect correctly. G-String worked fine though. Since there are enough online tuner tools and apps out there I dismissed that.

Another idea I had is not bass related. Since I wrote the song for my DnD group I still havenā€™t recorded vocals but started doing vocal exercises and so on. There are also already smartphone apps which do that, but I could use the tuner thing for singing warmup/exercises.

2 Likes

Wow, you are going next level. That is so cool. Again, thank you so much.
I will get a chance to donate when my card is funded. Hopefully others might have nice ideas of things to add.

1 Like

Ok @juli0r, I found something.
Can you have the paypal donation open in The donators language and currency units? Not sure if itā€™s possible, or possible on. Free paypal account, or not.
But would be cool to be able to read it, and know how much you are donating. Some currency to Euro might be easy to make a bistable Nd donate very smallMount, like just pennies, or make a mistake and end up donating 100euros when they meant to donate $10.

no I could only set the currency I want to receive one time.
I think I could make a ā‚¬ and a $ button, but not a complete localization.
Iā€™ll check it out some more, but right now I have to take care of my pork medaillons in the kitchen. Mnjam mnjam.

The language thing is weird. Which language did you get? Actually German? I assumed paypal would just use the user/browser preferences for that.

Also worth mentioning is that the fee paypal takes is one flat fee of 0.35ā‚¬ and like 2% or something. That means if one sends 1ā‚¬ (and 1$ is less even) I barely receive 70% of it. Gets better the higher the amount, but I remembered that paypal is not meant for so called micro transactions. At least with the usual conditions. As a business one could probably make a deal.

2 Likes

Can you do Venmo? I think itā€™s very small fee, less then paypal??? Just curious if you could

Eat that pork, dont Let em burn. Lol

1 Like

@T_dub
I checked venmo, but it doesnā€™t work internationally otherwise it wouldā€™ve been a sweet option. I looked around in paypal for options to receive non-commercial money and it seems paypal.me was the way to go.
I have changed the donation button link to a paypal.me - that seems to have localization built in. The steep fees especially for small amounts unfortunately still apply, but I looked around a bit and sending money internationally always includes a fee of some kind or another.

Hopefully that is in your language and currency. What also came to mind when thinking about your example: if someone should donate more than they wanted to or expected I can easily refund it. As I donā€™t want payment I certainly wonā€™t keep money you didnā€™t intend to give me. Might even be possible on your own in the paypal interface, but Iā€™m not sure about that. I just tested it with my girlfriend and the full amount including the fee is returned in that case.

Also I did this as a reaction to your suggestion. I know I keep saying It: I donā€™t want anyone to feel obliged to donate. Itā€™s free.
But if you send money from overseas itā€™s probably not worth it for either of us if itā€™s less than 5$. Iā€™m not saying this because I want a huge amount, but it would be a shame if a majority of the money would end up as fees for paypal.
If anyone planned on sending a dollarā€¦ just leave me a thanks or like a post. Thatā€™s quite enough.

2 Likes