Drum controller app

Overview

Drume is a music technology app that offers a high level drum-playing experience to the user. While not playing every single drum beat, the user builds on a variety of basic preset drum rhythms and controls the overall playing through a number of configurations, like dynamics, drum fills, swing feel etc.

The objectives of the project

• So far, a musician can jam over a pre-recorded drum track, but not over a real-time created drum track.
• Existing drum samplers offer a very low level drumming experience (the user has to play every single beat that is heard), which makes them difficult to play.
• Drums are loud and heavy equipment that is not alway easily accessible. Drume gives an extremely portable alternative of an actual drum set.
• Someone has to be a trained musician in order to jam with another musician. The app allows anyone to actually jam with a musician.

My role

In this project I was in charge of all the design aspects. Everything presented here was executed entirely by me.

UX Design decisions

This is a simple single view app.

I structured the controls in terms of how active or static are the events they represent. As active I refer to one-time events, while as static I refer to long-lasting events that are better perceived as states/modes.

The first ones can be better represented as buttons, while the second ones as switches, sliders, selectors etc. The button events are the ones that actively engage the user as they require frequent user action in order to utilise their functionality. The rest events are the supplementary ones, as they require occasional user action to alter some constant existing condition.

As a result, the button actions should have a more prominent position on the UI. They should be the ones that the user probably notices and tries first. I decided to structure these main buttons in an amphitheatrical pattern, inviting the user to use the fingers of his/her one hand to control them. Each button triggers the respective drum fill, which lasts as long as the button is pressed down. The exception is the middle one, which is a single-tap crash cymbal hit.

On the bottom of the screen, I placed the static controls that lay the foundation of the rhythm and most probably require the least frequent user action (the base rhythm preset and the metronome).

UI Design decisions

A realistic GUI approach seemed the most appropriate for a project like this, as most of the music technology software follow this convention to resemble actual physical music tech equipment. A white, clean and elegant style seemed appropriate the high-level character of the tool.

I decided to avoid as much as possible text labels, as they would make the UI too busy and distractive, though some explanatory label tooltips were added while interacting with the controls. This way, I also wanted to keep a minimal and stylish GUI.

In the absence of text labels, the iconography was challenging, as icons have to convey the full meaning. I tried to represent each drum and cymbal in a way that is recognisable and memorable.

Links

• The DrumE main view
• Drume video demo
• Drume in the AppStore