Rudimentalist

Rudimentalist is a practice tool for drummers working through the PAS rudiments – from singles and paradiddles to flams, drags, and rolls. Set a tempo, tap start, and play. The app listens through your microphone, scores every hit against the metronome, and tells you exactly where the timing slipped – to the millisecond.

No recordings. No accounts. No uploads. Audio is analyzed on-device in real time and discarded immediately.

WHAT YOU GET

• 39 of the Percussive Arts Society's 40 rudiments – singles, doubles, paradiddles, flams, drags, and rolls – organized by family. The buzz roll is coming in a future update.
• Grace-note scoring: the app hears the grace strokes in your flams and drags and scores them too.
• Live per-hit timing feedback in milliseconds, with on-time / near-miss / missed colors so you can read the screen and fix the hand without breaking tempo.
• A drift label that tells you whether you are consistently rushing or dragging, plus a running session accuracy percentage.
• Adjustable tempo and session length so you can drill a phrase or run an exercise end-to-end.
• Demo: watch animated sticks play any rudiment on left/right hand pads before you practice – change the tempo live, anywhere from 40 to 200 BPM, with count-in and loop.
• Simple R/L notation with hand-colored boxes by default, plus a how-to-play card on every exercise – switch to full notation anytime.
• A session results screen that summarizes accuracy and drift across the patterns you played.
• Free to try. Rudimentalist Pro unlocks everything with a one-time lifetime purchase (Family Sharing supported) or a time-limited Pro Pass – no auto-renewing subscriptions.

AUTOMATIC TIMING

Every device and every audio route – speaker, wired, or Bluetooth headphones – has its own latency. Rudimentalist measures it and keeps adjusting as you play, separately for each route, so the score reflects your playing, not your hardware. There is no calibration step. Changed your setup? Use Settings → Reset timing.

PRIVACY BY DESIGN

The microphone is the only sensor used, and the audio never leaves the device. No analytics SDK, no crash-reporting upload, no network permission requested. The app works fully offline.

WHO IT IS FOR

• Drummers who want to know whether they are actually on the click, not just close to it.
• Students working through a method book or a teacher's rudiment list.
• Returning players rebuilding consistency.
• Anyone who has ever wondered "am I rushing?" and wanted a real answer.

ABOUT THE DEVELOPER

Built by a drummer and app developer with a long-running passion for learning, playing, and teaching drumming. Rudimentalist is a small, independent app from Potens Music Limited. If you have feedback or run into issues, the support link below reaches the developer directly.

REQUIREMENTS

• A microphone – built-in is fine; an external mic gives sharper detection on a kit.
• Quiet-ish surroundings or a practice pad for clearest hit detection.
• Headphones recommended – through the speaker, the click can reach the mic.
• iPhone or iPad on iOS 17 or later.