Project Description
Free open source project to be developed by volunteers.
Support software and web components to help learn to play and practice the bass music instruments such as the bass fiddle, guitar, banjo, lute, harp, and drum.
The double bass (contrabass) is the lowest sounding member of the violin family of string instruments. A related (descendant) instrument is the bass guitar, fretted or fretless. There are some similarities that justify having support for the bass guitar in
this project: string names are the same, some double bass players are also bass guitar players, the learning and practice needs are similar (regular practice, performance, work with percussionists, ...). Although western music finds the guitar very attractive,
the rest of the world (most of the world's population it could be argued), still prefer all the variations of the muchricher (and more culturally meaningful)Veena,
Tanpura, Shamisen,
Oud (Rubab, westernLute),
Harp, Lyre (Begena) and fiddles (Rebab,Erhu,
Hardanger fiddle...). So I invite you all practitioners of these fine instruments to help out, if you find this project useful.
When you search for double bass you will often hit resources provided by drummers, not string players. To cater for this audience too, there will also be some support for the double (bass) low drum, part of the percussion family of instruments, as bass strings
and percussion often go together well in a band or orchestra. In this area as well, most of the world percussion is tailored to each region and people: my personal favourite are the tabla (in particular the low drum and its language) and the massive African
talking drums.
This project is in coding mode. All visitors and potential contributors are welcome: first produce some artifact (code, design, ...), and submit a sample of your work with your request to join this project.
The release for a first initial application is now available: an
instrument tuner.
The current step in the process is: specification, design and development of source code for amusic practice planner.
Coding started
Coding has started: C# for Windows 7. This will be based on NAudio and PitchTracker. The source code is intended to be simple, readable, fault free, fully tested and useful. By using NAudio and other existing libraries software development is accelerated.
House Rules
No spam, follow the acceptable use policy. As there has been too much spam, all previously accepted members have been deleted on the 23rd of March 2015. Please re-apply if you really want to join, but this time, please show that you are really committed to taking part and play fair. Do some work (any kind: graphics design, coding, documentation...) and let me know how you would like to be contacted in your request to join this project.
Work on your own, at your pace, take the initiative. Start in your own area on your computer, put proposed work in your own CodePlex or GitHub, communicate with other collaborators to avoid duplication of efforts, do not re-invent the wheel (for example exploit all the features of existing projects such as NAudio), use the "Fork and Pull Model", and share learning outcomes.
Master Plan
Start simple, get code out for people to play with, stay strong (fully tested) and well defined.
The first source code project is a HTML JavaScript dashboard for the learner, titled "bass is your friend".
The second project is a VisualStudio C# project called Contrebasse, featuring an instrument tuner, a music practice planner, and other features will follow as the code develops.
Please read the documentation.
