Backbeater!

This little iPhone app has been working wonders for my timekeeping in just a few short weeks that I have been using it. Backbeater is a tempo monitor, it is not a metronome (although there is a metronome function in it.) It does not tell me what to play, rather it tells me what I am playing.

I've been using the app at home and in the rehearsal studio. Last night was the first time I used it at a show, which I am listening to while I write this. I can now control tempos to within a range of 4 bpm (beats per minute) over the course of a whole song, some over 10 minutes in length. 

When listening to older recordings of myself, I can now hear all the radical fluctuations in my tempos that I could never hear before. Not only am I able to hear those wild changes in the past, I can also hear fluctuations of 2-3 bpm from last night's show.

Absolutely Sweet Marie is one of the more difficult songs for me to play, not because it is complex, but because of it's extremely fast tempo, so fast that my arm sometimes feels like it's going to fall off. Two weeks ago at rehearsal without the Backbeater, the song was a complete trainwreck, My tempo was all over the map. Forget zip codes, I'm talking area codes, state lines and time zones! (I was having a rough night before the session started. Damn neuro symptoms.) What makes this transformation even more notable is that the app dropped out on me half way through the song. It was VFR for the rest of the song and I can't detect any tempo changes. The next song had a cajun/zydeco type of rhythm to it and again the Backbeater dropped out, but my timekeeping didn't. I didn't notice any tempo changes, while I could hear 2-3 bpm changes in other songs. This is huge for me. HUGE I tell you!

My inner time clock is now getting the major maintenance that has been needed for way too long (LOF, timing chain, belts, hoses, fluids, brakes, battery, fuel pump, and even wiper blades, too.) Next will be to slowly work back in color and fills that I used to play before without the benefit of practicing with a metronome. (Bad David, BAD David!) This has been long overdue. My clock will still need constant monitoring and frequent maintenance.

While I truly love what this Backbeater app is doing for my timekeeping, it is not without its faults. It does not have a detailed user manual. What media that is available only gives a very brief description of what each setting control does. I would have preferred a user manual that told me specifically what each setting does and what changes I would need to make for the different rhythms, tempos, and time signatures I am attempting to play.

The app has one other annoying tic that I haven't completely figured out, even with the aid of the manufacturer. When I first started using the Backbeater, it dropped out constantly. That is, I would be playing only the snare only on the 2 while listening to my recordings, and then all of a sudden all I see are the icons and wallpaper on my iPhone. I first installed it just under the bottom hi-hat cymbal. I moved the mount and the iPhone to the lower, thicker tube of the stand and noticed the dropouts were much less frequent. So I decided to mount it on a separate cymbal stand that was not being used and placed it adjacent to my hi-hat stand. That helped, but the dropouts still continue. I would venture to say that it happened about 6 times total during our two sets, a little over one hour each. Perhaps changing the settings will help even more, but that will be a longer than necessary process without the aid of a detailed user manual.

Despite those two negatives out of the box, the Backbeater app still gets two thumbs up from this once sloppy but passionate drummer.