User Guide Thank you for downloading Pocket Beat 3.60! You can always download the very latest version of Pocket Beat at http://www.aurete.com/pbeat
Installation Installation is simple! Just HotSync "PBeat.prc" to your Palm. Note: If you have an older version of Pocket Beat with a version number of 2.44 or less, please delete it from your Palm before installing.
Turn sound on/off by pressing your Palm's menu silkscreen button (or menu key if your Palm has a keypad) and selecting one of the given sound options. The menu can also be accessed by tapping on the application title ("Pocket Beat 3.6") in the title bar. Tip: Turning sound off and going by the Vivid Visual Tempo Reference is recommended for live situations! Say goodbye to blowing your ears off with a loud click! The VVTR™ display can be picked up in your peripheral vision, especially when using a color Palm! Pocket Beat allows for dual tempo settings.
Hardware button icons (beside the "GO/STOP" button)
indicate with a black dot which tempo is selected for playback.
You can select the active tempo by tapping the hardware button
icons, or by pressing the actual up/down buttons on your PDA. Change a tempo value with the small left/right
arrows (tap them or hold down to increment faster). You can also
click directly on a tempo number to write in your own using graffiti
or Palm keyboard. OR... Give a count-off! Tap 8 quarter notes
on the drum kit. The drummer will continue your count-off,
and come in on the downbeat of either the 4th or (if the tempo
is 120 or higher) 5th measure. The shuffle tickboxes cause the "hats" to be played with triplets not straight eighth notes. (This only has an affect when sound is on). Tap the GO/STOP button to toggle playback Pocket Beat 3.5 reads setlist information from a memo titled "setlist". This makes it easy to edit your setlist within the Palm Desktop Application and then HotSync changes to your palm. Of course, you can edit the setlist memo right on the Palm using the built-in Memo Pad application. Note that you may have multiple memos with variations on the title, "setlist" (such as "setlist club xyz" but only the memo currently titled "setlist" - no more, no less - will be read into Pocket Beat. 1. Creating a sample setlist Pocket Beat will automaticallty create a sample setlist memo as a formatting guideline for you to follow. All you need to do is make sure you don't already have a memo titled "setlist" already entered into your Palm's Memo Pad application. When you start Pocket Beat without a "setlist" memo already created, the text "+ Setlist" appears in the title bar. Pressing "+Setlist" will create a "setlist" memo with the proper formatting. To edit the setlist, or to create your own, simply use your Palm PDA's built-in "Memo Pad" application. 2. The sample setlist memo Let's take a look at the sample setlist memo created by Pocket Beat when one doesn't already exist: ------------------------------------------------------------- The first line contains the word "setlist". This automatically makes the title of the memo "setlist". Every two lines after this constitute settings for an additional track in the setlist. The first of these two lines is the tempo, which must be a whole number. The second of these two lines contains the song title, followed optionally by a space and an "S" character. If the " S" is present after a song title, this signifies to check the "Shuffle" box when this song is dialed up which, if sound is enabled, will cause the beat to be played with eighth note triplets on the "hats". Each additional song will consist of another two lines--the tempo line and the song title line. Note: you can optionally include a third line which contains voice information for custom beat voicing. More on this in a bit. Note that this third line is optional for setlist entries. If you don't want to enter a beat, don't include the third line. Don't insert a a blank line instead of a beat as this will signal the end of the setlist. There are times when you may want to rearrange the order of a setlist memo with lots of entries, and have only the first few items count for the night's setlist. You can do this by inserting a blank line following the last entry you'd like to be read in the setlist. Any setlist entries following the blank line won't be read in by Pocket Beat, but they will still be there in your memo-- ready to be included next time. 3. Stepping through a setlist To step through a setlist, just tap the word "Setlist" in the title bar to advance to the next song, or press the Palm PDA's Address & To Do buttons to go to the previous and next songs respectively. The next song in the list will have its title show up at the bottom of the display, and have its tempo dialed up into first tempo slot. (The second tempo slot is always there for you to enter other tempos into). You can also change the tempo of the first slot without affecting the setlist.
Pocket Beat is not a sequencer or drum machine. It is a metronome first and foremost. However, enough users have asked to be able to change the voices for certain beats that I have added this feature. You can choose which voice (hi hat, snare drum, or bass drum) sounds with each beat, but you can't get any more granular than that. At least, not for the time being. Practicing in 3/4 or, say, 5/4 or even 11/4 time is now possible though through the addition of this feature. In addition, when audio is off and you are only using VVTR™ to follow the tempo, the visual highlighting of the bass and snare drum via the superimposed rectanges gives you a visual indication of the audio voices. Say you want to practice in 7/4 with a bass drum on beats 1, 4 and 7; a snare drum on beats 2 and 5 and a high hat on beats 3 and 6 at a tempo of 165bpm, and the song is called "Mister Seven". The entry for this in the setlist memo would be: ------------------------------------------------------------- ...Where bass drum = 'b', snare drum = 's', and high hat = 'h' Note that this third line is optional for setlist entries. If you don't want to enter a beat, don't include the third line. Don't insert a a blank line instead of a beat as this will signal the end of the setlist. As a visual aid you are allowed to insert one space between betters anyhere. So "bshbshb" may also be entered as "bshb shb" (easier seen as a grouping of 4 and a grouping of 3, totalling 7 beats).
1. What are they? You can remind yourself about anything-- song structure, lyrics, patterns, chord changes, you name it. Use of this feature is for registered users only, but to see an example of a Cheat Sheet, have Pocket Beat create its sample setlist and step through the setlist to song #3 (Get You Down). Unregistered users will see text representing a sample Cheat Sheet!
Sampled drum sounds are only enabled for devices that I have personally tested. At the time of this writing, these PDAs are: Tungsten C, Tungsten E, Tungsten E2, Tungsten T3, Tungsten T5, Treo 600, Treo 650 (new!), and Zire 71. Pocket Beat is created for you, by a fellow musician who cares about keeping accurate time and protecting one's hearing with accessible, affordable technology. I invented the patent-pending VVTR™ display feature and integrated it into Pocket Beat so that we musicians who prefer to keep as accurate time as possible no longer have to blast an extremely loud click into our eardrums during rehearsals and performances. Nor is it necessary to shell out loads of cash for an in-ear-monitor system that doesn't necessarily offer the flexibility VVTR™ does. I also added the setlist feature because no other Palm metronome I could find offered this either, and no other metronome, period, that I could find offered alphanumeric song title display. So if you have any questions, comments, praise, etc... I am here to listen to you and take your voice into account! You can email me at garyduke@idirect.com or even call me (registered users preferred) at (416) 823-0813! I look forward to hearing from you! And if you would like to order a stand for Pocket Beat, or would like clarification on building your own stand based on the pictures on the Pocket Beat home page (http://www.aurete.com/pbeat) please contact me at garyduke@idirect.com . Have fun using Pocket Beat! Best, Gary Duke Registration:
Pocket Beat is a precision metronomePocket Beat's unique programming makes it a professional-grade metronome. Not only is it a fantastic, feature-rich tool for keeping time while playing live performances or while you practice guitar or other instrument, Pocket Beat can also be employed for professional studio uses - in place of, or in addition to, a traditional click track. Other Palm metronomes and sequencers may claim to keep time, but many are grossly inaccurate. Click here to learn more, and perform your own accuracy test against Pocket Beat and other Palm metronomes...
Best wishes, Gary Duke |