A fun little web-based tool I put together this morning using the samples from my Bodhrán backing tracks custom instrument for the ABC Transcription Tools:
“The Thumpatron” - Bodhrán Backing Tracks for Tune Practice
Demo video:
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This is so very cool! I will be using this to improve my bodhran accuracy as well as a backing track for whistle.
My cat was all over the iPad while I was playing with this. She clearly wanted an explanation. I told her it was magic, and that seemed to satisfy her
Thank you! I’ve been looking for something just like this.
Fantastic! Thanks Michael. I’ve played along to it for a bit this afternoon, and it’s quickly becoming my favorite metronome-type tool.
Feature requests for upcoming builds: Can we get some additional tempos, or maybe more granular control? I’d like to be able to practice reels at 105 and 115, for example. Also, some faster tempos: jigs at 125 and 130, that type of thing. (Also, of course, more tune types: hornpipes, slip jigs, etc.)
Again, thanks to Michael! He has a knack for developing software that quickly becomes indispensable to me.
Figured out how to interpolate additional tempos.
FYI, these are the only tune styles I have available to include in the tool so there won’t be any styles added later.
Awesome job eskin!
Just spent ~20 minutes playing slipjigs, reels, and polkas. Great fun!
Thank you so much for creating this!
Aldon
p.s. I met you once in San Jose at a whistle gathering at a guy named Dana’s house. You’re a cool uber-talented guy!
Wow, that was a very long time ago!
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Updated the tool with some higher tempo options:
Reels and Jigs now go up to 145 bpm and Polkas now go up to 165 bpm.
Also added some tempo range filtering options since there are so many buttons now:
Added a new “Humanize” option that adds tiny continuously changing speed variations for a less mechanical feel:
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Latest features demo video:
Many thanks for this! Used it quite a bit today during practice and it was fantastic to play along with something other than a metronome!
As someone who has hated metronomes, I’m quite enjoying this tool!
I’m waiting for the snare drum for Céilí Band simulated backing.
I’ll have to defer to someone else for the Céilí Bandomatic!
Thank you so much, Michael. I’ve been appealing in vain for something like this for decades, and was just this afternoon thinking of renewing my appeal. I originally did a one-page spec for something which I suggested calling Bodhrapp: an app which would allow the user to adjust the speed of bodhrán rhythm tracks for all the main tune types. I shared it here and elsewhere, but nobody rose to the bait.
When I first started appealing for this, I thought an app was the best way to approach it, but in the meantime speed adjustment seems to have become more easily accessible on various apps (including the voice notes app on my Android phone), so an intermediate solution would be a set of recorded bodhrán rhythm patterns for all the main tune types which could be played via an existing app at speeds that would be instantly adjustable at the touch of a slider and playing on an infinite loop.
Your “product” sidesteps this, but an app might be long-term the more convenient way to do things if anyone out there is interested in running with this idea.
My own rhythm and tempo playing pipes is direly erratic. It’s so bad that I have been trying with very limited success to tackle it using a metronome, but the metronome doesn’t really work for me at all. I think it may be because it lacks the capacity to give an upbeat, imposing a Prussian bandmaster’s heavy downbeat rigidity that just doesn’t have the right feel.
I look forward to trying out the Thumpatron.
Roger
The main advantage of a native app over my current implementation of The Thumpatron web-based app is that it could be used without an internet connection.
The current design of The Thumpatron has individual samples for each style in most of the tempos, and only speed shifts a few of them on-the fly for samples I didn’t have.
These samples are served, like the tool itself, from my web server. The total size of the samples is about 25 megabytes.
The web version could be re-implemented as a “Progressive Web App (PWA)”, and pull all the samples locally either into an IndexedDB database or local private cache, which along with a service worker would allow the tool to be run offline but at this point, I’m not planning on doing that.
Doing that adds a lot of complexity and issues with updating the tool (different browsers and platforms have their own little quirks) and easily dealing with future maintenance of the tool.
Perhaps in the future.
I implemented my ABC Transcription Tools as a PWA primarily to allow for offline use of the interactive PDF tunebook files it creates, and dealt with all the update complexity. It works very well but was a real challenge to get offline operation correct.
Also re-implementing The Thumpatron as a native app would almost certainly require me to rewrite it both in Swift for iOS as well as Java for Android and deal with the App Store review process on both platforms. Having it as a web app served from my own web server allows me to do whatever I want whenever I want without some App Store review process gating my work.
For now, The Thumpatron only can be used while online. I hope you enjoy it!
Thanks for that detailed reply, and I appreciate that the Thumpatron is (I think!) a by-product of a larger piece of work by you.
I wonder if there isn’t a hypo-low-tech workaround: a simple set of separate sound files recorded in a universally-used format, labelled reel, double jig, slip jig etc., which users could download and store in a directory on their phones. Then, when they want to use them, they just play them via a standard sound-file player app like The Incredible Slowdowner, Voice Notes, Easy Voice Recorder etc. and use the speed variation facility in that app to achieve the desired speed? A sixteen-bar sample for each of the main rhythms would probably be sufficient as long as it can be put on loop by the user.
I’m not trying to give you more work, perhaps a passing bodhrán player might pick up the hint.
Sure, they could do that.
Or they could just use The Thumpatron. 
I guess they could also record the sound from The Thumpatron and then use the recorded files in whatever they want.
Another nice feature I have in The Thumpatron is the “humanize” option that adds random micro-shifts in tempo to make the looped sequences feel even less mechanical. That would not be available in any of the slow-downer apps. I also provide optional “count-in” clicks before starting the playback.