A free tanpura drone on any note, for intonation and scales
Drone
Loading the drone.
Free to use, with no account. It plays until you stop it.
A drone gives you a home to play against. Put one on, play a scale slowly over it, and you hear how each note sits: which ones feel settled, which ones want to move, and whether you’re in tune.
It’s the drone from the Shed, the set of practice tools my pupils get in the member portal. It’s free to use here.
A home to play against
It’s at its most useful on fretless and upright bass, where the intonation is yours to find. It’s just as good on a fretted bass for hearing what each degree of a scale sounds like against home.
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Any of the twelve notes
Laid out round the circle of fifths, so the nearest tone centres are next door.
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A tanpura’s four strings
Choose whether the first string is the fifth, the fourth, the seventh, or home on its own.
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Three registers
Low, mid or high, to sit under or over where you’re playing.
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Just or equal intonation
Pure intervals, as a tanpura is tuned, or the same tuning as a piano.
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Your reference pitch
A = 440, or anywhere from 438 to 444.
There’s more in the Shed
The metronome, the drone and the tuner are free for anyone to use. They come from the Shed, the practice space in the member portal that everyone who has sessions with me gets. In there they sit alongside a practice diary, a habit tracker, a tempo tracker, a recorder and a shelf of backing tracks, and it all works as an app on your phone.
Start with an introductory session.
Half an hour to meet, talk about where you’d like to get to, and see how we work together. It’s £20, and we’ll arrange a time as soon as you get in touch.
Book an introductory session (£20)