The Piper's Metronome™ is a powerful and full-featured metronome that will help you achieve better musicality and control. Try it out for free and then unlock all the amazing features here to take your piping to the next level.
It's easy and quick to get started with the Piper's Metronome™.
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The Piper's Metronome™ has a powerful and intuitive interface that makes it easy to use. On the main display, you will be able to configure all of the settings you need including: tempo (beats per minute), tune type, speed level, rhythmic patterns, pulsing, accents, and sounds/volume.
The main display consists of a ring display that changes color to display the timing. The ring will display all of the beats in one bar of the type of tune you’ve selected. For example, a 2/4 march will display two beats and a 3/4 march will display three beats. Each beat is marked by a numbered dot.
To start the metronome, press the triangular Play button in the center of the ring.
You can set your tempo in three different ways:
At the top of the screen, you can switch between Basic and Advanced modes. Basic Mode allows you to use all of the features in the app. Selecting Advanced mode allows you to create, save, and share multi-tune sets such as MSRs and Medleys, including pipe band style attacks and fully-customizable transitions between tunes. Please see the section below for more about Advanced mode.
You can select a tune type which will automatically configure the number of beats per bar. Select your desired tune type from these options: March (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8), Strathspey, Reel, Jig (6/8, 9/8, 12/8), Hornpipe, Slow Air (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 9/8).
Speed Levels are pre-set tempos based on difficulty and allows you to quickly find your practice tempo based on your skill or experience level. To use this feature, select your Tune Type and then select your Speed Level. Level One is the slowest and Level Five is the fastest. The tempo ranges of the different tune levels vary widely, so Speed Levels lets you find an appropriate tempo for all of your different types of tunes. You can use Speed Levels to measure your progress, as you build from a lower to a higher level. You can use Speed Levels to find the right tempos across all types of tunes. We’ve created the levels to be musically equivalent across all tune types, so, for example, a strathspey played at Level Four will feel similar in speed to a reel played at Level Four — even though the tempos in BPM will be different.
Choose from a variety of rhythmic patterns to help master the rhythms in your tunes, including off-beats, triplets, dot/cuts, and more. Different tune types allow for different rhythmic patterns.
One important aspect of the proper expression of pipe tunes is the emphasis of the beat notes. Pipers describe this using various terms such as pulsing, accenting, stressing, or pointing. Unlike many other instruments that can emphasize a note by playing the note louder, pipers emphasize note by lengthening the note. In 2/4 Marches, for example, pipers emphasize the two beats in each bar by lengthening the first half of the beat relative to the second half of the beat. More specifically, this is done by lengthening long note on the first half of the beat relative to the long note in the second half of the beat. Another way to describe this would be to delay the off-beat. In Strathspeys, the effect of pulsing is to lengthen the first and third beats of each bar relative to the second and fourth beats. (This is often described by pipers as “strong” and “weak” beats.) This important musical style of expression can be learned, refined, and mastered by using the Pulsing Level.
When you select your Pulse Level, you will see a small line on the ring display the displays the offbeat. Notice that the line is just past the halfway point between the beats on either side. In Strathspeys, you will see that the first and third beats are slightly longer than beats two and four. If you select a bigger Pulsing Level, you will see a bigger effect. The amount of pulsing you choose may depend on your tempo, your tune, and/or your musical style or that of your Pipe Major (if you are in a band).
Pulsing is available for Marches (except not 6/8, 9/8), Strathspeys, Reels, Hornpipes, and Slow Airs.
You can choose which beats to accent with a different sound. The default setting is to accent the first beat of each bar.
You can choose the volume levels for the accented beats, the unaccented beats, and the rhythm patterns between the beats.
Advanced Mode allows you to create sets of tunes, including introductions and custom transitions between tunes.
To open a Set in Advanced mode, click the Open button at the bottom left of the screen. You will see a list of sets, including Default sets which are samples included for you see how the Advanced Mode works. You can also create an Advanced mode Set from a Basic Set from within the Edit screen.
To create a new Set, from the main screen, click the Save button. You can also create a new by clicking + from the Set list screen. By default, your new Basic Set will be created based on the current metronome settings.
To edit a Set, click the Edit button. You will enter the Set Editor. Here you can edit these options:
To add more tunes to your Set, click Create Advanced. You may edit your Set name. You will see a list of Tunes. Click on the first tune to Edit all of the settings for the first tune in your set. To add additional tunes, click Edit Set at the top left of the screen to go back to the list of Tunes in your Set. Click + Add Tune to additional tunes. Repeat for all of the tunes in your set.
To add an introduction to your set, click Add Intro. Choose the number of bars or Band Intro for the standard pipe band style introduction, which includes a four beat countdown, the pipe major’s call off, and two three-beat rolls.
To customize the transition to a tune in your Set, go to the Set Editor and click on the name of tune you are transitioning TO (e.g. the second tune of the Medley). Use the -/+ buttons to add the number of beats you want in the break between the tunes. The default length of the break is ZERO beats. Use the +/- buttons to adjust the Start Beat for when the break begins. The default start beat for the break is ZERO, which means the break will begin after the completion of all beats of the last bar of the preceding tune has finished. To start the break on an earlier beat, use the buttons to reduce the number of beats of the preceding tunes.
Example: (March to Strathspey):
To transition from a March to Strathspey with a break of two Strathspey beats that begins on the start of the last beat of the March, the break would be configured like this:
Example: (Slow Air to Jig):
If the piper wants to transition from a Jig to Slow Air with a break of four Slow Air beats that begins on the start of the last bar of the Jig, the break would be configured like this:
The Piper's Metronome™ makes it easy to share your sets with your band mates, friends, students or teachers. To share a Set, click the Shared button on the Set settings screen. Click Shared With. Click the + to Add Email for the person you want to share with. This set will be automatically shared with the email addresses, and will automatically show up in your friends' Set List in their app.
Important: For sharing to work, the email address entered above must exactly match the email address used by your friend to log in to the app, and you must save your changes to your set by using the Save button on the main screen. The sharing changes you have made will only be applied once you have saved
As a convenience, you can also Click Send Notification Emails to send an email message to the person(s) you have shared your Set with to let them know. The set will be shared whether you do this or not.
To open Sets that have been shared to you by someone else, select Open from the main screen. Any sets that have been shared to you by others will automatically appear in the list under their email address. If you don't see a shared set you were expecting to, by far the most common cause is that the person sharing the set has made a mistake with your email address. Make sure they are using the same address you use for the app, and ask them to remove it and re-type it to be sure.
High Contrast Mode: You can choose between the regular display mode and the high contrast display (white background).
Flash on Beat: You can choose to use your phone’s camera to flash on each beat.
Vibrate on Beat: You can choose to have your phone vibrate on each beat.
Dot Cut %: You can set the exact proportion between the long and the short notes in each dot/cut pair. The default value of 10% should be good for most applications.
Full Circle Progress: By default, the ring color changes resets from light to dark with each beat. However, you can select to have the color change only once per bar.