Metronome by SheepiesLab

iOS Universel / Musique

Most metronome apps hand you a single ticking pulse and call it done. That works fine for basic practice — until you need to work on something more complex: polyrhythms, multi-instrument grooves, or sections of a piece that shift between time signatures. At that point, you're either juggling multiple apps or reaching for a DAW when all you wanted was a click track.

Metronome started from that gap. The premise was to build something genuinely useful for musicians who need more than one pulse, without turning it into a production tool. Multiple tracks, each with its own rhythm and sound. A clean interface that stays out of the way when you just need to play.

The Story Behind It
My friend Kev is a classical music composer based in Manchester. He writes and performs his own pieces — the kind of music where structure shifts from bar to bar, where one section might be in 7/8 and the next in 5/4, and where practicing one rhythm in isolation means holding another in your head simultaneously. Standard metronome apps were never built for that. You'd get a single pulse, a fixed time signature, and nothing that could follow the actual shape of the music.

Watching him work through those passages — and the workarounds he had to use just to stay in time across irregular structures — made the gap obvious. The app came out of that: something that could hold multiple independent rhythms at once, with the structure to match however the music was actually written.

What We Built
An app built around a multi-track dashboard. Each track runs independently and can hold one or more bars — each bar with its own time signature, tempo, instrument, and beat accent pattern. The mixer sequences bars in order and loops back to the first, so a track can walk through an AABA form or alternate between a verse and a chorus groove without any manual intervention.

Beat accents are set per-beat on a three-level scale: strong, weak, or muted. The dot display reflects that state visually — strong beats show in red, weak in orange, muted in black — and the audio engine applies different gain levels in the mix so the distinction is audible, not just decorative. Subdivision clicks can be added independently and sit quietly below the primary accent level so they guide timing without competing with the beat.

Instrument choices span a set of pitched and unpitched percussion samples — woodblock, snare, bell tree, cowbell, tambourine, triangle, and more — assignable per bar, so layered tracks can each carry a distinct sound. Track volume and per-bar volume are separate controls, letting you mix relative levels without disrupting the overall balance. Each track also carries a BPM multiplier, making it straightforward to run a track in double-time or half-time against the rest.

The audio engine mixes all active tracks into a single rolling PCM stream rather than coordinating independent players. This keeps timing tight regardless of track count and handles overlapping sample tails cleanly across buffer boundaries. Live edits — volume, mute, accent changes — take effect immediately without restarting playback; only tempo or meter changes interrupt the transport.

Tracks can be saved to a local store and loaded back into any session. Background audio is supported, with lock-screen and Control Center presence via the system Now Playing channel and remote play/stop controls. No account required, no cloud sync, no data leaving the device.

Pricing
The app will be £3.99 on the App Store. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no free tier with features locked away. You buy it once and it's yours.

Acknowledgements
The percussion sound samples used in the app are sourced from the Philharmonia Orchestra's free sound sample library. They are recorded by professional orchestral musicians and made available for use in projects like this one. It's a remarkable resource and worth knowing about.