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Feature FlowFrame Practice

There’s No One Right Way to Make Music

If there’s a single belief that’s guided the development of FlowFrame, it’s this:
There is no one right way to make music.

Not in how you compose it.
Not in how you teach it.
Not in how you practice it.

Music is shaped by bodies, communities, values, traditions, physics and always by personal taste. The goal of FlowFrame isn’t to enforce a method. It’s to provide a structure that helps you pursue your own.

That means building a tool that adapts to what you need, whether you’re grounding yourself in the overtone series, navigating tempo curves, or improvising with harmonies that fall outside Western tuning.

Here are some of the ways FlowFrame supports that idea.

Flexible Time and Pulse

  • Metric Modulations: A quarter note from a quarter note triplet can become the eighth note of the next measure, no math required.
  • Tuplets and Nested Tuplets: Build rhythmic structures as intricate (or simple) as the music demands.
  • Subdivisions up to 12: Layer up to five different subdivisions on a single beat to mirror complex rhythmic feels.
  • Beat Groupings: Customize how measures are grouped and accented—useful for everything from Bulgarian dance music to expressive rubato.

Pitch, Drone, and Harmony—Your Way

  • Drones: Pitch-stable practice with variable A tuning (adjustable in cents).
  • Preset Harmonies: Select from built-in chord types or stack your own.
  • “Any Note” Drones: Choose from four octaves to create exactly the harmonic environment you want.
  • Just Intonation (and other temperaments) + Reference Pitch: Tune every note relative to any pitch center you define.
  • Overtone Series-Tuned Drones: Build practice tools aligned to the physics of sound.
  • Quarter-Tone Support: Explore microtonality and expressive intonation without needing external synths or plugins.

Time-Event Music? There’s a Frame for That Too.

Some music isn’t measured in beats at all—it’s structured by seconds, not measures. For that, there’s FreeFlow, FlowFrame’s time-event framework.

Use it to:

  • Rehearse or perform works coordinated by stopwatch instead of barlines
  • Trigger cues with clock precision
  • Synchronize players in pieces where pulse is irrelevant or intentionally absent

So What Is FlowFrame, Really?

It’s not just a metronome.
It’s not just a tuner.
It’s not just a tracker.

It’s a practice framework, designed to grow with you, not to tell you how to play.

Whether you’re a classical flutist fine-tuning your vibrato to a just-tuned drone, an experimental violinist redefining pulse, or a teacher building patterns for your students, the point is this:

You don’t need to change your music to fit the tool.
The tool should meet you where you are and open new possibilities from there.

Categories
Feature FlowFrame Music Practice

Built With You: How FlowFrame Grows Through Your Ideas

One of the best parts of building FlowFrame has been seeing it evolve not just from my ideas, but from user-suggested features.

Some of my favorite features weren’t in the original plan. They came from musicians I admire, collaborators I trust, and friends who use FlowFrame in ways I couldn’t have predicted.

The Bulk Editor

This one came from my wife, Erin Lesser, an extraordinary flutist, teacher, and someone with an uncanny ability to spot inefficiencies. Watching her prep a pattern one day, she said:

“I wish I could change all these measures at once.”

She was right.

The bulk editor, a user-suggested feature added to FlowFrame.

So we built the Bulk Editor, a way to create multiple measures with meter, easily. It saves time and reduces friction, which means more focus on the music itself.

This one came from Alan Pierson, a dear friend and artistic compatriot at Alarm Will Sound. He asked a simple question:

“Could I just share a pattern with someone by sending them a link?”

The answer, at the time, was no. But it should’ve been yes.
Now it is.

Link sharing, another user-suggested feature added to FlowFrame.

You can share any FlowFrame with a link. No downloads, no zip files, no need to walk someone through your tempo map over text. Just click, copy, send. It’s a small shift that opens the door to faster collaboration and deeper creative exchange, something Alan has always championed in his own work.

Remove Beat 1 Emphasis

During beta testing, I had the chance to hear Ben Russell play with FlowFrame. He was exploring rhythm: layering subdivisions, shifting feels, creating something intricate and propulsive.

But I noticed something: the emphasized downbeat (useful for many) was getting in the way of the rhythmic patterns he was trying to bring out.

That moment led to the “Remove Beat 1 Emphasis” feature. Now, you can turn off the default downbeat click and build patterns where every beat carries equal weight or where the emphasis comes entirely from the player, not the tool.

De-emphasizing beat one, a user-suggested feature added to FlowFrame.

What’s Next

These features didn’t come from a roadmap, they came from real musicians solving real problems. User-suggested features are how FlowFrame will continue to grow.

I’m currently working on a feature to allow creating and sharing recordings. And I just had a conversation with my dear friend Mark Dupere regarding adding temperaments to the tuning options. This summer, I’m working on multi-language support, so that FlowFrame can be more accessible to musicians around the world. And beyond that, I’ll keep listening to your feedback, your frustrations, and your ideas.

If you’ve got one, send it my way at flowframe [at] flowframe [dot] app. Some of the best parts of this tool weren’t mine to begin with.

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Feature Music News Practice

FlowFrame

I made a thing. It’s called FlowFrame. It’s a practice suite.

Prelude: The Line Between Boredom and Overwhelm

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Psychologists map flow on a simple graph: challenge on one axis, skill on the other. When the two rise together you enter the flow channel. Below it lurks boredom, above it anxiety.

Instrumental practice lives on that razor’s edge. Push too hard and the metronome becomes an accusing tyrant; coast too long and you start scrolling instead of shedding. Staying inside the channel demands a frame that grows with you.

Frames, Not Cages

I made FlowFrame to be a tool that enables musical expression, not one that dictates it. In my own practice, I wanted something flexible enough to support exploration—but firm enough to provide structure. Not a cage, but a frame.

A good practice framework does three things:

• Clarifies the immediate goal. (“Lock in my rhythm and pitch.”)
• Provides real-time feedback. (Was that tuplet really even?)
• Scales the next challenge upward the moment mastery appears.

FlowFrame does all of this in a way that puts the user in control. You’re not just following a pre-built track, you’re designing your own terrain. Whether you’re creating click patterns from scratch, linking pitch drones to rhythmic cycles, or building a progressive routine for a student, FlowFrame adapts to your artistic goals.

How It Compares

Tool TypeWhat It OffersWhat It MissesFlowFrame’s Difference
Metronomes (Soundbrenner, Pro Metronome)A basic pulse, subdivisionNo harmony, no piece-length programming, no context
Full-score metronome with programmable clicks, tuplets, modulations, and drones
Tuners
(Tonal Energy, Tunable)		Pitch accuracy, visual feedbackNo rhythmic context, no timing supportReal-time harmonic support aligned to rhythm, not isolated tones
DAWs (Ableton, Logic, Reaper)Total flexibilityHigh setup time, steep learning curve, overkill for basic tasksZero setup browser-based environment for rhythm + pitch + structure
Music-Minus-One apps (Metronaut, Tomplay)Pre-recorded tracks, built-in repertoireFixed repertoire, no customizationFully customizable patterns + public pattern library = personalized, shareable practice content

Where these tools specialize narrowly (timing, pitch, playback) FlowFrame unifies those elements around your musical goals. The frame holds when you need it, and it disappears when you don’t.

Beyond the Widget

• FlowFrame isn’t another “metronome-plus.” It’s a practice ecosystem:
• Timing drones & harmonies anchored to any click pattern for rock-solid pitch.
• Educator linking that turns assignments and feedback into an asynchronous dialogue.
• Growing pattern library that crowdsources solutions to tomorrow’s rhythmic puzzles.
• FreeFlow timers for pieces ruled by seconds instead of bars.

In other words, it’s the scaffolding that lets musicians climb higher without losing their footing.

Epilogue: A Wider Horizon

Flow thrives on balance: challenge and ability, structure and spontaneity. FlowFrame’s job is to hold that balance just long enough for you to tip it again, to move the horizon a measure farther. It is, quite literally, a frame for flow and the better the frame, the more daring the art that can live inside it.