Pocket Beat puts a drummer in your pocket!
This drummer is great to practice acoustic guitar with.

Welcome to Pocket Beat 2.4

Pocket Beat screenshot

Requires: PocketC (included in .zip).

Pocket Beat Features:
  • Synthesized snare, kick, & hi-hat
  • Animated drum kit plays with the beat
  • Continuous playback is accurate to within 0.000025 sec's
  • Support for tempos 40 through 196
  • Support for shuffle feel (3/4)
  • Dual tempo & feel settings let you easily switch between playing slow for precision and fast for speed
  • Tap a count-off - the drummer responds and plays your tempo!
  • Auto-adjusted note decay
  • Settings are called while strumming using up & down hardware buttons
  • Persistent, HotSynced settings

Files:

help.html: This document
*.gif: Graphics files for this document.
MathLib.txt: Readme for MathLib
MathLib.prc: Advanced Math Lib. (Not required for PocketC or Pocket Beat)
readme.txt: Readme for PocketC

Required for Pocket Beat installation:

PBeat.pdb: The Pocket Beat applet
PBLaunch.prc: The Pocket Beat App Icon & program launcher
PocketC.prc: The PocketC runtime

Usage:

  • Hardware button icon with dot shows current playback setting
  • Select playback setting by tapping the button icons, or by pressing the up & down hardware buttons
  • Change tempo settings using arrows or click on a tempo to use grafitti or,
  • To 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 the either the 4th or (if the tempo is 120 or higher) 5th measure.
  • Toggle shuffle or straight feel using the respective tickboxes
  • Tap the GO/STOP button to toggle playback

*Note: Because of the CPU time needed to check and process your count-off, the drummer starts his count-off on beat 3 (not beat 1) of the measure after yours. He then counts 2 or 6 quarter notes on the hat and comes in on a downbeat.

Tips:

  • Holding tempo arrows for 2 sec's will rapidly step though tempos
  • For loudest playback, lay pilot on a smooth, shiny table
  • Watch drum kit animation for time cues when strumming loudly
  • Practicing licks and riffs at slow tempos will improve your accuracy, so set a slow top setting to practice for precision, then switch to a faster bottom setting to practice for speed!
  • About 25% of Hackmaster hacks severely affect playback by draining system resources. If playback seems seems erratic, check with the sample .ra file and list of resource-hungry hacks at http://web.idirect.com/~garyduke/pbeat.
  • Check the Pocket Beat web site regularly for Pocket Beat news and to snag the latest version.

Registration:

  • Avoid the tempo-freeze at 300 uses, and
  • Get a lifetime of free upgrades (your code will register all versions)
  • Get access to the hidden guitar tuner
  • Support Pilot shareware development

Registration is only $8. If you find Pocket Beat useful,

buy it at PGHQ.

Or order by phone! 1-800-741-9070
(Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm, Central Time)

You will need to supply your pilot user name (shown in HotSync app) in order for your registration code to be generated.

When you receive your registration code, click on 'Unregistered' in the titlebar to upgrade the software to the registered version.

Best Wishes,

Gary Duke
garyduke@idirect.com

Version Info

2.3 and 2.4 - Sound fixes for Palm OS 3.1+ devices 2.2 - Own application icon; Integrity check: checks for performance-impeding HackMaster hacks.
2.1 - Fixed an untimely floating-point calculation bug.
2.0 - Tap a count-off - the drummer responds and plays your tempo!
1.4 - Fixed playback problem (introduced in 1.3) which caused some notes to dull-out
1.3 - Interface response time problems are eliminated.
1.2 - v1.2 is 50% faster at runtime, 4k slimmer, memory problems are eliminated. Wingman users can now d/l the web site's .pdb directly to the pilot.
1.1 - Memory problems, which occur on some pilots, are reduced.
1.0 - Initial public release.

Pocket Beat web site: http://web.idirect.com/~garyduke/pbeat