Standalone softwareDrum practice app · in progress

Stickler

A rhythm game for a drum practice pad. It listens to the pad, judges every stroke against the click in milliseconds, early or late, and teaches each exercise with an animated pair of sticks. It runs in the browser on a laptop.

I made it to practise rudiments at home while learning drums, on the way to playing with other people.

Stickler’s demo playing the single paradiddle: notes scrolling to the line, coloured by hand, PERFECT −9 ms, score and accuracy

The Learn screen: two sticks drawn over the pad at their stroke heights, moving in time with the click, and the sticking grid

The result of a run: three stars, 94% accuracy, timing for each hand and a histogram of early and late strokes

The home screen: the microphone and sound check, and the list of stages, the first one open

Process

In development: a pickup for the pad. A laptop microphone hears the whole room, so the next step is a printed clip for the pad’s rim with a piezo disc pressed against its edge, read by a tiny USB-C board that shows up as a microphone hearing only the pad. Designed and modelled; not yet built. The pictures are renders of the 3D models.

Render: the pickup clip close up, the C over the pad’s rim, the box for the electronics and the knob underneath

Render: the clip on the rim of a 12-inch practice pad

Render: lid off, the small board in the box, the piezo’s leads coming in, USB-C at the end

Render: cut through the middle, the thread in its printed nut, the foot on the pad, the piezo against the pad’s edge

Render: from below, the knob that closes the jaws

Render: the six printed parts laid out as they print

Render: the electronics, a piezo disc wired to a small microcontroller board

Render: under the board, three runs of wire