Bounce Metronome Blog

06/12/14

13th January 2015 - Bug fixes

13th January 2015,

Fixed another bug in Automatic Tempo and Rhythm Changes (Ctrl + 245) . - recommended you download it if you use this window for tempo changes without rhythm changes. For details see Bug fixes.

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01/12/14

30th November - close to release for Mac beta - improvements in polyrhyhmic rum machine, new floating play button,

The main news this time is that it's now close to the release of the Bounce for Mac beta - if you are a Mac musician, I suggest you give it a go, as several musicians are already using it regularly - you may find it does all you need already. Then, as well as that, this upload has: a new floating play button, useful if you want a minimal interface. New arrangement of the main window with time signatures above the preset buttons. Improvements in the drum machine. Several other minor improvements, and many bug fixes. 

BOUNCE FOR MAC BETA

Am now close to release of the Bounce for Mac. Already have several musicians who use it regularly. Next stage is to contact all those who offered to beta test it to see if they turn up any issues. But you might well find it works just fine for you already. If you are interested to give it a go, you can get it here. Wineskin Bounce for Mac Beta.

DRUM MACHINE AND POLYRHYTHMIC DRUM MACHINE

The polyrhythmic drum machine, used to clear itself whenever you change any of the settings. It still does that if you change number of beats per measure, measures, or subdivisions but not if you just change how you notate the rhythm or you add extra parts at the bottom. Instead, adds a new "clear drum machine" button you can use to clear it when you want to.

FLOATING PLAY BUTTON

Especially useful if you want a minimal interface to stop and start the rhythm while working with another program. NB on Windows you can minimize the main window while leaving this button open using Shift + minimize.

MAIN WINDOW WITH TIME SIGNATURE ABOVE PRESET BUTTONS

IMPROVEMENTS IN THE WIN DROP MENU.INCLUDING SWAP PARTS OPTION

It now has the options you most often need for working with the windows such as, to close all except the main window and the window you are working with.

Also - for the main window, parts window, and 2D and 3D bounce, option to swap highlighted with next or previous part. This makes it easy to move parts to the front or back of the 3D scene, to take an example. Rhythm sounds the same, just swaps the parts without changing anything.

AUTO RECOVER FROM FREEZE

If Bounce freezes or crashes - something that happened a fair bit in early stages of the Mac beta testing - then next time you start up Bounce, it offers to relaunch with the same settings as before so you can continue from where you left off - a bit like the way that web browsers offer to auto recover.

So anyway, probably not that likely to happen any more, but just in case it does, you have this option.

It is a very mild kind of freeze on the Mac, because Bounce freezes inside the Wineskin. The skin continues to work as a Mac program, and then you go to the top menu and choose Force Quit, and start it up again. And if that happens, it will offer to relaunch with your settings as they were just before the crash.

Also saves Freeze projects if this happens to help with debugging, if anyone reports a freeze in the future.

WHERE TO GET IT

To get the latest Mac beta see  Wineskin Bounce for Mac Beta. and to download the installer for Windows or for Wine on Linux, go to the download page.

Many other minor updates and a fair number of bug fixes. For details see Change Log

 
24/08/14

27th September 2014 - bug fixes - Continuing work on Mac Beta + Scales, Ta Ka Di Mi, new "Latin American" metronome type, improvements in Drum machine, etc

Upload on 27h September: minor bug fix in the instrument selection window. See Bug fixes (26th Sept).

Tp get the latest Mac beta see  Wineskin Bounce for Mac Beta. and to download the installer for Windows or for Wine on Linux, go to the download page.

Upload on 21st September: minor bug fixes - a bug to do with highlighting of keys pressed if you release sustaain key before you release the note itself - and a confusing extra tip added to some tool tips - for details see Bug fixes (21st Sept).

Upload on 8th September fixes a temporary freeze effect you can get where the bouncing balls animation stops for a few seconds when you move the mouse over the 3D bounce display. It was a bug in the hit testing code to detect where the mouse is over the 3D scene.

Also, visual issue if you use sostenuto with the on screen keyboards and then sustain, and then release sustain pedal - then sound works fine - but - it keeps the sustained notes visually highlighted until you release sostenuto pedal.

Some other minor fixes - for details see Bug fixes.

Upload on 29th August with more bug fixes (sorry forgot to write them up, will do that later).

Saturday 23rd August 2014

This upload brings as new features: the option to use Takadimi syllables for the entire measure, adds the SCALA scales archive as a droplist along with windows for making scales (tunings).

Also, adds a new Latin American "metronome type". This doesn't add anything new - it has the same latin american rhythms as before from Drum & Dance. It just makes them easier to find.

Also now you can show the droplist of your own saved rhythms in music notation in the main window for the Drum & Dance, Flamenco and Latin American "metronome types". (Same droplist is shared by them all - but in future could have, optionally, separate droplist for each one, and also have nested droplists as for the scales and arpeggios).

Also has many improvements on the drum machine and polyrhythmic drum machine layout and presentation.

Many other minor updates and a fair number of bug fixes. For details see Change Log
 
Also continued with bug fixing and work on the Wineskin Bounce for Mac Beta.
27/07/14

31st July 2014 - Continuing work on Mac Beta + Accent Curves and "Swing" Curves + Easy way to make instruments that play chord progressions and melodic sequences

31st July update - this adds a a couple of new options, "Set Pulse to match Beats per Measure in all Parts" and "Accent and "Swing" Curves Preset" to the new Accents and Swing Curves window (in beats drop menu in the pro metronome) - to make it easier to use these new features. Also adds a new option to "level out" so the beats at the beginning and end of the measure have the same volume - or the same time in case of note timings for smooth transitions from one measure to the next - if that's what you wantt.

Also continuing work on the Mac beta.  For details see Change Log.

New update of the Mac beta. Also added "accent curves" - rather cool sine wave type variation in the accents - you can do the same with the timings also as "swing" curves. Also added an easy way to make instruments that can play repeating melodic sequences or chord progressions - with a droplist of a few presets to select from. 

 

Faster startup - this has iIncreased size of installer by 10 MB - so takes longer to download - but leads to faster start up time every time you run it. That's becuase I changed the compression settings in the program I use to protect it from crackers and process the unlock keys to favour a faster startup over better compression.

For Windows or Linux, just get the installer from the download page and run it to update to the latest.

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27/07/14

27th July 2014 - Accent and Swing Curves + Easy way to make instruments that play chord progressions and melodic sequences

The accent curves feature let's you make rhythms with the accents following a smooth wave pattern. Similarly for the "swing" curves - you can find this new option in the Beats drop menu in the Pro metronome.

Also options to click and drag many notes at once for volumes - and also for times - with a probability distribution based "sphere of influence" - defaults to 20% - set this higher and your drag on one of the beats can change them all considerably.

All this is especially useful for rhythms with large numbers of beats per measure.

Also added a new option to make instruments that play a melodic sequence over and over again - or a chord progression. You'll find a drop list of examples in Instruments (Ctrl + 8) under "sequences and chords, with a few defaults set up such as the Pachelbel's Canon notes, and chords, La Folia chords, and 12 bar blues chords.

This works like the Chord Progression For Part (Ctrl + 250)  - but more flexible as you can select them into several parts at once - instead of just using them in a single part - especially useful for melodic sequences.

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30/06/14

Update, 28th June 2014 - minor update, bug fix, Mac Beta

This is a minor update,  Adds some minor features - mainly - work on compatibility with the Mac - and released a public beta for the Mac. 

Minor updates

Added menu to the on screen keyboards.Added a "Win" drop menu to the menu. This has many of the same options as the system menu (Alt + space or click on the icon for the window) - but easier to access.

Added option to Wave Shape Instruments - Audio Format (Ctrl + 188) "set BOUNCE SYNC DELAY to match sample delay" - useful as a way to keep the sampled percussion in sync. with the visuals.

Mac Beta

You can read details, and if interested, download the Mac Beta here: Bounce for Mac Beta

There's a timing issue in this beta which I'm still working on, see the instructions under "Work arounds for this beta" which may fix it for you if it happens.

Screen Reader issue for the Mac Beta

Sadly, there's a major issue with the Mac Wineskin for blind users - the Mac "Voice Over" can't "see" Bounce Metronome at all, or any other program wrapped in a WineSkin as far as I can see. I'm researching into options there, to see if there are any ways around it, and if you have any thoughts at all do say!

Details here: Screen Reader Issue.

06/06/14

Last day of kickstarter - Ordered the 11" Air already - 119% funded, 6 hours to go

The project to get Bounce running on a Mac is definitely going to happen now. It's reached the stretch goal also.

Have gone ahead and ordered the 11" tablet sized Macbook Air because prices are so volatile 
 

This is your last chance to pledge on kickstarter - though I'll keep it open for PayPal pledges for a while longer.

Bounce Metronome, Tune Smithy, Lissajous 3D... on Intel Mac!

05/06/14

Update, 5th June 2014 - Sample precise sample playing, multi-touch keyboard and muliti-touch theremin, easier to use tempo and rhythm changes, polyrhythmic subdivisons, other minor features and bug fixes.

This upload brings you the new sample precise percussion sample player, multi-touch playing for the one screen keyboard, multi-touch "theremin", improvements in the simpler version of the automatic tempo and rhythm changes - and an easy way to do polyrhythmic subdivisions amongst other things. Also some bug fixes.

New Sample Playing feature

You can take a sample you recorded yourself - or one you downloaded, for instance from freesound.org - or many other online sources for free, and for commercial samples and sample packs - and in an easy process, just browse to find it to  import it into Bounce Metronome and you can immediately play it as a new percussive instrument.

The advantage of this is that you can have extremely high precision if everything is done in Bounce Metronome itself at the sample level instead of going via midi - well sub millisecond precision of timing. Also lets you use any sounds you like for the clicks.

Here it is in action

That video also shows the polyrhythmic subdivisions in action - it's just a minor feature - but you can now make these rhythms more easily by selecting polyrhythmic subdivisions from a drop list of default subdivisions - or enter them into the subdivisions field as e.g. 2:3:5 or whatever it is you want.

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05/06/14

Update, 5th June 2014 - Sample precise sample playing, multi-touch keyboard and muliti-touch theremin, easier to use tempo and rhythm changes, polyrhythmic subdivisons, other minor features and bug fixes.

This upload brings you - first new option to import any samples you like as new non melodic "instruments" to play the rhythms - and do all the playing within Bounce Metronome itself at extremely high precision timed at the sample level in the audio stream.

If you have a touch screen device with multi-touch - tested on the Surface Pro - you can now play any of the on screne keyboards with multi-touch so you can play chords by touching several points at once. With the surface Pro you can get ten finger multi-touch - each finger plays a different note.

Then - in the automatic tempo and rhythm player - added a new "All in one" window which you'll probably find helpful if you use that feature. Other minor details and bug fixes.

New Sample Playing feature

You can take a sample you recorded yourself - or one you downloaded, for instance from freesound.org - or many other online sources for free, and for commercial samples and sample packs - and in an easy process, just browse to find it to  import it into Bounce Metronome and you can immediately play it as a new percussive instrument.

The advantage of this is that you can have extremely high precision if everything is done in Bounce Metronome itself at the sample level instead of going via midi - well sub millisecond precision of timing. Also lets you use any sounds you like for the clicks.

Here it is in action

That video also shows the polyrhythmic subdivisions in action - it's just a minor feature - but you can now make these rhythms more easily by selecting polyrhythmic subdivisions from a drop list of default subdivisions - or enter them into the subdivisions field as e.g. 2:3:5 or whatever it is you want.

Read More »