System 7.5 Recommended(may work with earlier versions)
Quicktime 2.5 Required.(Editing available without Quicktime)
PowerMac or 68K Macintosh
Using Virtual Drummer
Virtual Drummer was built from the ground up to be easy to use, so you should have no problems getting it up and running.
Adding Drums to your Song
When you open a Virtual Drummer document, no drums are in your drum set. To add them, you drag them from the drum palette to the left part of the Virtual Drummer window. Add as many drums as you wish to the set, but you cannot add more than one of the same type of drum. You can also move drums around within the set by clicking and dragging them.
Removing Drums from your Song
To remove a drum from your song, hold down the option key while clicking on the drum.
Adding a Measure
To add a measure to the song, select Add Measure from the Song menu. Alternately, you can click on the add measure button, which is right-most button at the top-left of the document window.
Adding Beats
If you've adding drums and measures, you'll notice a grid within the document. This is where you place your drum beats. Click on the box where you wish to add the beat, and a black box will appear.
To see a more detailed view of your song, use the zoom buttons at the button of the document window. There, you can zoom in, zoom out, or choose the zoom level. This allows you to add more notes in a given time frame.
Playing a song
To play a song, select Play Song from the Song menu or click on the Play button in the main document window. This will bring up a playing window(unless there is one already associated with the song). This window has a play/stop button. This window relates to the song as of the last time you clicked on the play button in the main window. This means that if you make changes to the song, they will not be reflected in the playing song window, until you click play in the document window.
Selecting Measures
To select a measure or group of measures, click on the ruler area above the sequencing grid. If a measure is already selected, and you want to select the measure instead of dragging it, hold down the shift key while clicking. Selections must be contiguous. You can move measures by dragging selected measures. To copy a measures, drag it while holding the option key down, and drag it to a new location.
Playing Selected Measures Only
You may want to play just a portion of your song. To do so, select those measures, click on the button with the right-pointing arrow on it to toggle it down, and play the song.
Looping your Song
To play the song continuously, click on the loop button in the document window, then play the song.
Cut, Copy, Paste
To copy or cut measures, select the measures then choose the appropriate item from the Edit menu. Pasted measures will appear before the current selection, or at the end of the song if no measure is selected.
Drumlets
Drumlets are measures or groups of measures that are available to use in your song. To open a drumlets palette, select "New Drumlet Palette" from the "Drumlets" sub-menu under the file menu.
To add a drumlet, select the measures you wish to add. Then, click and drag them onto the drumlet palette. You'll be asked to name the drumlet.
To add a drumlet from the drumlet palette to your song, click and drag the name of the drumlet onto your document window. If you don't have the proper drums in your set, Virtual Drummer will automatically add them.
All other functions in Virtual Drummer are just as you'd expect from any Macintosh application. If you have a suggestion, please forward it to me at my address below.
Contacting the Author
If you have any comments or suggestions for Virtual Drummer, I'd love to hear from you. Many of the changes in this version were the result of suggestions from users. This is still a work in progress and I'm very excited about where its going. You can get me at the following locations:
email: jonnichols@igs.net
Phone: (613) 596-6497
Post: Jon Nichols
1107-2600 Draper Ave,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K2H 9A9
Web Page:
I'm currently in the process of getting a web site set up. It should be ready by October 1st. If you want the address, send me email to me on or after that date. I hope to set up a page where people can send in there songs and drumlet palettes so that we can all use
Version History
Version 2.1
-Threaded playing.
-Cut, Copy, Paste.
-Drums window saves its position.
-While making a selection, score now scrolls, so its possible to select a larger number of messages.
Version 2.0.2
-Fixed a number of problems with File I/O.
-Improved drawing performance significantly on large songs.
-Added remaining 16 General MIDI Instruments.
-No longer crashes on startup when Quicktime is not installed.
-Fixed major bugs that occurred when drawing very large songs.
Changes in 2.0.1
-Fixed a number of problems that occured when launching by opening a document:
-drum list window didn't show up
-splash screen didn't display
-mouse tracking didn't occur properly resulting in values being left in the info section at the top of the main window
-Fixed a bug where dragging multiple measures without copying would result in the measures being placed in the wrong places.
-Dragged measures are now selected after they're dropped.
-Changed the Licks menu item in the file menu to Drumlets.
-Fixed a bug that could cause crashes while editing when measures were divided by 30 or more.
Version 2.0
Complete rewrite. Drag and drop interface. Customizable drum sets. Drumlets palette. Quicktime 2.5 support. Quicktime export support.
Version 1.0b2
Fixed up BigBang. Renamed Virtual Drummer. Version 1.0 was never released, because there were too many internal problems with the application to be able to consider it a final version. Also, Quicktime had problems with drum sounds, so at that time, Virtual Drummer was nothing more than a toy.
Version 0.5
Initial public release. Named "BigBang". Released as a technology release, open for comment.
Known Problems
Currently, Virtual Drummer will not properly play to external midi devices using OMS. This will not be fixed in version 2.0. However, if you export the song as a Quicktime movie, you can use Movie Player to play the song to the external device.
There are no other known bugs.
About the Logo
Earlier this year, an art contest was held to design a logo for the Virtual Drummer application. There was a tremendous response which featured numerous entries. The winner was the team of Kristina and Paul Kremer. They have a web site at http://web.wt.net/~sprdpnut
