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Cyclic Independence for Drummers 1.1.2 - User Guide and FAQ

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How Cyclic Independence for Drummers works

Cyclic Independence uses the multimedia environment of the PC to create a virtual workshop for drummers. It can be easily used just as effectively by a beginner as it can by the most advanced player. It is really an open book that allows you to create and save a virtually unlimited resource of exercises, grooves, beats, fills, patterns or whatever and use them in a way that suits your own style and areas of interest.

Whether you start with the graded exercise program or develop your own patterns entirely there are so many different ways of using Cyclic Independence that the only limit is your imagination.

THE CYCLIC INDEPENDENCE CHART

An example of a Cyclic Independence chart is shown below. It has 4 grids and within each grid are 4 lanes which represent the pattern that is played by each limb i.e. RIGHT HAND, LEFT HAND, RIGHT FOOT and LEFT FOOT. So each grid can be seen as a "map" for the limbs, making it easy to see exactly where to place a beat in relation to the meter setting and the metronome beat.

Because each pattern can be a different length cycle from any of the others, there is a lot of scope to create polyrhythmic patterns which can involve all the limbs or permutations of rhythms that change every bar.

RIGHT - LEFT CO-ORDINATION

Placing various R and L cyclic patterns on the grids gives you the opportunity to create unique exercises that can be useful for developing all-important co-ordination and independence skills. Pattern combinations can then be varied in different ways:

shifting a pattern in a lane to the right or left
swapping with the lane next to it (for example swapping right and left hand parts)
orchestrating around the drum kit by the use of symbols to represent the parts of the kit or percussion setup
adding or removing accents on any individual beat

To help get started with these type of combinations exercises like those that this are included in the co-ordination and accent categories.

ISOLATION ZONES

Any area within a grid can be isolated by the use of sliding screens to make it easier to work on one particular area at a time. The MIDI drums and metronome will only play the isolated section of that grid (the areas between the blue screens). This can be useful to work on more challenging combinations a bit at a time. This feature can also useful to restrict the number of bars in any grid - for example having 3 a bar rock beat in grid 1 followed by a 1 bar fill in grid 2.

THE METER SETTINGS

The meter strip at the top of each grid can be set from 2 to 9 subdivisions of a quarter note. In the above demo, the beat subdivisions are 16th notes in the meter 4 grids, 8th note triplets in the meter 3 grid and quintuplets in the meter 5 grids. The meter setting determines the beats that are played by the metronome.

OTHER GRID FEATURES

turn individual grids on or off
flow one grid into the next. All 4 grids can be used for a single pattern combination
apply double time to meters 2, 3 and 4

THE EDITORS

LANE EDITOR: Patterns are placed into grids from the editing windows. Preset patterns can be loaded in from either the 2-12 or 13-32 Cycles "libraries". Patterns can also be loaded from saved files or new patterns can be created from scratch. The lane editor is also used to change symbols and place accents. Cycles can be up to 33 grid units in length.

GRID EDITOR: The grid editor has the same functions as the lane editor but displays all 4 lanes in the grid so they can be edited at the same time. It is also used for altering bar lengths and meter settings

THE METRONOME

The Cyclic Independence metronome plays the quarter notes (primary beat) and subdivisions of each grid according to the meter that it encounters as it plays through the chart. In this demo the tempo is fixed to the quarter note and the subdivisions change when it plays a different meter. Alternatively, the metronome can fix the tempo to the subdivisions so that all the notes will play the same regardless of the meter setting.

THE MIDI DRUMS

When they are activated, the MIDI drums play the pattern combinations within each grid through the PC's soundcard or external MIDI device. Any general MIDI drum or percussion instrument can assigned to any of the symbols that are used in the grids.

THE MOVEMENT WINDOW

The movement window is used to give a visual guide for using a selection of movement patterns around the kit which can be combined with each other to help develop skills for moving around the kit using various hand patterns. This concept is developed in the movement category exercises.

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