Groove Sergeant

Groove Sergeant was my first foray into building web apps.

It's a coordination practice tool that, like Rock Band, tracks your accuracy as you drum. Connect a MIDI instrument or use your computer keyboard to play along with a sequenced groove. Your performance is evaluated after each loop and plotted onto a graph that will eventually represent your learning curve.

I created this app because, while learning to play the drums, I noticed myself struggling to learn some patterns while breezing through others. By examining my progress I hoped to understand which of my limbs I was having trouble gaining independence with and use that information to focus my practice time. I found that seeing my progress on a scoreboard encouraged me to persevere and learn tricky patterns that I had previously given up on.

Try it by selecting a groove and practicing it at a gradually increasing tempo. For more, create a new groove from an exercise out of Marvin Dahlgren's Four-Way Coordination.