About FreeLimbs
FreeLimbs was created out of love for drumming, and out of frustration with the lack of tools available to help drummers develop coordination on the drum set.
To play the drums and be a successful drummer, you need limb interdependence, better known as coordinated independence, or coordination. This kind of freedom is required, so you can play a complex rhythm split onto multiple drum set instruments that are played between your hands and feet.
It is often said that coordination is the key to unlocking the full potential of the drum set. This skill can be developed, but it takes time and practice, and it is often overlooked in traditional drum lessons.
But how do you develop coordination?
Well, there are several books out there. Most of them are for developing coordination in a single genre. Some are great. But all books have problems.
Books require you to read drum notation.
And that is a skill in itself. It takes time to develop, and it can be a barrier to learning. Many drummers never learn to read drum notation, and that's okay. Especially if they are hobbyists. But it means they can't use books to develop coordination.
Books are not interactive.
Not even the ones you read online. You can't see how your limbs should line up. And if you can but got it wrong you wouldn't even know, because you can't hear it. Unless you open "Audio track 18" on the CD glued on the back cover... You can't speed up or slow down the exercise. You can't imagine how it sounds with actual music. Straight, or swung, or between the cracks.
Books are not exhaustive.
They don't cover all ostinatos, and they don't cover all "melody" patterns that need to be played to free your limbs. So you end up interpreting books like Syncopation, Stick Control, and New Breed in novel ways, devising new exercises... which are still not exhaustive. And when you come up with your own ostinato or a "melody" pattern that you haven't seen before, you end up writing it down (if you know music notation) on a piece of paper, and you forget about it.
Books can't hear how you play.
Books won't tell you if you're playing something wrong. Or if you're rushing or dragging. Or if you practiced enough patterns. Or even if you practiced one pattern at enough tempos. Books can't tell you if you're getting better.
What about videos?
Videos are great. You get to see and hear a real drummer playing the exercises. But they are bite-sized. You need to sift through a ton of videos to find what you need, and then watch a lot of them to get a full workout. And they soak a lot of time, because the exercise is a fraction of the video. And, like books, videos won't tell you anything about your performance.
What about courses?
A good number of professional drummers create wonderful and inspiring courses, clinics, and bootcamps. But none of them can teach you coordination for all genres and styles, including linear studies. Unless you're willing to attend or buy hundreds of these. And you can't take the drummers home with you to give your live feedback about how you're doing in your practice room.
So, an app was needed.
An app that helps you develop coordination in many genres.
An app that develops not just the rhythmic coordination between your limbs, but also the spatial coordination between your body and the drum set. And the dynamics coordination between your drums and the music. And the temporal coordination between the notes you play.
An app where you can see how your limbs line up, hear the exercises, play them to the exercise drums, to a metronome, or to professionally crafted drumless music tracks, so you can hear the beat in musical context, and feel the sensation of jamming with a real band.
An app that gives you challenging exercises but knows how to help you when you get stuck.
A drum teacher in your pocket, which will give you honest real-time feedback about your timing, dynamics, unisons and precision.
Let me introduce myself
My name is Stoyan Damov, and I'm a software engineer. I've been writing code for over 30 years, and have been the CTO of a high-tech software company until the summer of 2023.
But I've also been a hobbyist drummer for over 13 years. I've been studying drumming with a great teacher, but like everyone else I had to learn drum set coordination on my own. So I've been buying & reading books, DVDs, online courses, collected YouTube & social media videos, and writing down exercises on paper. And for a long time, I've been searching for an app that would help me develop coordination. But I couldn't find one.
When I quit my tech job and had some time to think about what I want to do next, I realized that I could use my skills to create this missing app. So, I built FreeLimbs, and now I'm sharing it with you.
I truly believe it will help you become a way better drummer and give you the freedom to express yourself fully on the drums.
Enjoy!
Special thanks
FreeLimbs would not have been possible without these wonderful people:
- Andre Forbes, the professional musician and composer, who provided all the drumless music tracks you'll be jamming to. He's a great guy who loves helping the drummers community, and has a huge collection of free and paid drumless music tracks on his web site FreeDrumLessTracks.net, check it out!
- Georgi Markov, a professional band and session drummer, and my former drum teacher. His feedback improved FreeLimbs, and his impeccable drumming is the one you see on the home page.
- Petyo Ivanov - a prolific software engineer, entrepreneur, and a good friend, who advised me on technical and product aspects of FreeLimbs.
Thank you all, and thank you my fellow drummer, for using FreeLimbs!
If you need to reach out to me with questions, suggestions, or feedback, please contact me at stoyan@freelimbs.com.
Stay passionate,
Stoyan, founder of FreeLimbs