My First Time With Backbeater

By Chaun Horton

In a world full of apps and gadgets, it is refreshing to find something geared towards the foundation of drumming — time.

The Backbeater arrived on my doorstep in a simple, clean package. One of the things that caught my attention was the label saying “100% Profits to Charity”, which I believe is an honorable and generous act of kindness.

A couple of days later I headed to my studio to test it out. To be quite honest, I did not really know what to expect. I unboxed the sensor and attached it to my snare drum. The first thing I did was to compare the sensor to the click I was using in my Logic session. The tempo of the session was 95 bpm.  I wanted see if they were in sync as I was hitting single notes on the rim of the snare drum — which they ended up being.

I then had the idea to move the sensor to the hi-hat stand, since that is where I physically keep time. In the Backbeater app I found I was able to adjust the sensitivity threshold. I bumped it up from the default setting, which was set to 80, up to 90 and began to play. As I was playing eight notes on the hi-hat foot pedal, the sensor proved its’ sensitivity in syncing with the tempo that I had set in the session.

I would periodically check the tempos of Backbeater and the logic session to see if they lined up. One thing I noticed was, while having the sensor on the hi-hat stand it would pick up the eighth notes I was playing on the hi-hat pedal — doubling the tempo on the Backbeater. Luckily, by the end of the song, the Backbeater (meter) ended up doubling the time of the tempo set in the session. Ultimately it was still in time.

Backbeater lets you know if your tempo fluctuates, and just as I suspected, my tempo fluctuated approximately two bpm either above or below the set tempo. During different takes in the session I found that in using the Backbeater app, it made me focus in on playing quarter notes on the hi-hat foot pedal, to intentionally keep the tempos synced. By doing this, it helped me pin point trouble spots, and that needed more time and attention in order for the groove to settle.

I absolutely will be using the Backbeater in the future, as part of my practice regimen.