Damian Erskine Launches Three BassEducation Practice Apps
Last month, Damian Erskine added some new practice tools to his BassEducation platform, and now three of them have launched as mobile apps. The BassEducation Metronome, BassEducation Tuner, and BassEducation Ear Trainer are all available on iOS for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
First up is the BE Metronome, which Erskine devised after getting tired of switching between different apps. “I got tired of switching between different metronome apps depending on what I needed in the moment — one for subdivisions, another for odd meters, none of them on my laptop,” he states. “So I built the one I always wanted, and it’s genuinely become the metronome I use every day.”
The layout is inspired by Boss’s legendary Dr. Beat metronome with sliders to dial in subdivisions of quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenths, and triplets. Upon opening the app, you have a simple, good sounding click, but there’s plenty of depth with odd and custom meters, three accent levels, subdivision faders, swing feel, a practice coach, a harmonic drone, and more. An upgrade to Pro Mode enables a library for saving grooves, set lists, additional sounds, and more.
Go in-depth on the BassEducation Metronome app with this walkthrough from Erskine:
The BassEducation Tuner has strobe and needle views. It also has instrument presets including a bass guitar setting to hone the pitch detection’s range. Other features include a pitch pipe, sweetened tunings and temperaments, and horn transposition.
Finally, the BassEducation Ear Trainer is a valuable tool for any musician trying to improve their listening skills. Erskine includes cheat sheets to get you started. From there, there are four modes for training your ear: intervals, chord quality, modal color, and scale degrees. Piano samples play each example for you to figure out. You can set a given root note, or you can have it be random for deeper training. Erskine also built in three difficulty modes to fit all players’ needs.
The BassEducation apps are available now on the App Store. The Metronome is $4.99, the Ear Trainer is $7.99, and the tuner is free. Learn more on the BassEducation website.
In his time with No Treble, Kevin has met hundreds of amazing bassists and interviewed icons like Jack Casady, Victor Wooten, Les Claypool, Marcus Miller, and more. He's a gigging bassist performing jazz in Northern Virginia and bluegrass with The Plate Scrapers up and down the East Coast. Kevin appreciates all genres of music, from R&B to metal and everything in between. Connect with Kevin on Facebook and check his performance schedule on his website.
