Frequently asked questions
Software requirements
FreeLimbs is a web application and will work on desktop & laptop computers, iPhone, iPad, Android smartphones & tablets, as long as it runs on a modern web browser like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari. Wearables like smartwatches, etc. are not supported.
Also have a look at the What do I need to use the "Live feedback" feature question to see what's required to use the real-time feedback & analysis for electronic drums in FreeLimbs.
As a general rule, FreeLimbs should work on devices and browsers which are actively supported by their manufacturer or software vendor (i.e. they are relatively modern), and where you keep up with the operating system and browser updates.
We tested FreeLimbs on multiple combinations of the most common devices, operating systems and browsers. The list below
has the ones that were able to run FreeLimbs successfully. The start (*) below means that the device, OS, or
browser version is irrelevant. If you're reading this on your smartphone, please rotate it in landscape mode.
| Device | OS | Minimum OS version | Browser | Minimum Browser version |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone/iPad | iOS | 16.4.1; Apr 7, 2023 | Safari | Same (updated with the OS) |
| iPhone/iPad | iOS | 16.4.1; Apr 7, 2023 | Chrome | 92+; Jul 20, 2021 |
| Android (Google, Samsung) | Android | 10; Sep 9, 2019 | Chrome, Edge | 117+; Sep 19, 2023 |
| Android (Google, Samsung) | Android | 10; Sep 9, 2019 | FireFox | 127+; Jun 11, 2024 |
| Mac (Mini, Book, Pro, Air) | Mac OS | * | Safari | 16.4.1+; Mar 27, 2023 |
| Mac (Mini, Book, Pro, Air) | Mac OS | * | Chrome, Edge | 92+; Jul 20, 2021 |
| Mac (Mini, Book, Pro, Air) | Mac OS | * | FireFox | 127+; Jun 11, 2024 |
| Windows PC or laptop | Windows | * | Chrome, Edge | 92+; Jul 20, 2021 |
| Windows PC or laptop | Windows | * | FireFox | 127+; Jun 11, 2024 |
The list above is not exhaustive — it's possible that earlier browser versions, different browsers, or browsers on other operating systems (e.g. Linux) can run FreeLimbs.
In any case, your free 14-day trial should be enough to test FreeLimbs on your device(s) and figure out if you can run it, before making a commitment to purchase a subscription plan.
Yes, and there are at least two very good reasons for that:
1. FreeLimbs offers 300+ unique drumless tracks in a variety of tempos. These are literally thousands of audio files, amounting to gigabytes of storage, that would otherwise need to be installed on your device.
2. You're going to automatically and immediately get all updates or bug fixes, as soon as they're released, without having to manually update your installation (on each device).
If there is a significant interest for an offline-mostly version on desktop or laptop computers, we might reconsider.
You can use any headphones, but you should prefer wired ones because they don't have noticeable audio latency.
Latency is the delay you experience when the audio is lagging behind the video. This lag can be quite visible (and annoying) in audio/video-heavy apps like music software and video games, and even more noticeable on mobile devices, which are generally less powered than computers.
If you only have Bluetooth headphones (especially older models with a perceptible delay), you will need to compensate for the lag in FreeLimbs. When an exercise is playing, click the Bluetooth icon and use the slider to adjust the lag to the point where what you see and hear playing matches perfectly.
High-end Bluetooth headphones can work well because the lag is negligible. Many of these also come with a wire which you should prefer — both to avoid the latency, and for your health in general.
This can happen on some smartphones.
If you can see the browser's address bar, swipe FreeLimbs up — that should hide the address bar, and the app would fit.
If this doesn't work, rotate your device a couple of times.
If that doesn't work, especially when opening multi-grid checkpoint or mastery exercises, pinch in (zoom out) with your fingers — that should fix it.
If the app still doesn't fit on your smartphone (e.g. you have a very narrow display like Samsung Z-Fold with viewport width of just 345 pixels), please let us know, and try using it in landscape mode.
Not yet, but we're planning to create both. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, FreeLimbs is mobile-friendly, so you can run it on tablets and smartphones by opening freelimbs.com. It features a responsive web design and looks good on most screen sizes and resolutions.
You can also browse the workouts on your wide-screen computer but practice on your smartphone by scanning the exercise's QR code.
Payments
Your free 14-day trial gives you full access to all content and features in FreeLimbs. Please, make use of that, there's a lot to explore and enjoy. If you love FreeLimbs, please purchase a subscription plan and become the drummer you're destined to be.
We really appreciate your feedback! If there's anything you didn't like or have any suggestions, please let us know, either via the Feedback button in the app, or by emailing us.
After the free 14-day trial period expires, you will be prompted to purchase a subscription plan.
Our company's payment provider Paddle, is a Merchant of Record, which means that they are the seller in any subscription purchase, and they will handle post-sale disputes or compliance issues for you.
The payment for your FreeLimbs subscription plan will appear as PADDLE.NET* FREELIMBS on your bank or card statement.
FreeLimbs pricing is tax-inclusive.
You will not pay any sales or VAT tax on checkout. FreeLimbs will incur the tax. You're welcome!
You can upgrade, downgrade, or change the billing interval any time from the Account and billing menu under the Profile button in FreeLimbs, or from Paddle's Customer Portal, which will be released very soon.
When you change your billing cycle from monthly to yearly or vice versa, a prorated amount will be calculated, and you will be charged immediately. If this is a downgrade (yearly to monthly), the prorated amount for the unused time of your current subscription will be added as credit to your credit balance, and this will be applied to your next renewal's invoice.
When you change your plan but stay on the same billing cycle, you will have the option to either switch to your new plan immediately, or after the end of the current billing cycle. If you choose to switch immediately, you'll also be able to choose whether you want the prorated amount to be calculated and billed now, or calculated now but billed at the end of the current billing cycle.
If you are not familiar with the term "pro rata" and prorated billing, you can read how proration works on Paddle's website, and also on Stripe's website where you can see examples.
Our payment provider, Paddle, maintains a credit balance for your account. Any time you downgrade your plan or switch from yearly to monthly billing, Paddle will add credit to your balance, and this will be applied to your next renewal's invoice. You cannot withdraw your credit balance. You can see your balance in the Account and billing page. In addition, Paddle will send you receipts after any downgrade, upgrade, or billing cycle change, so you can see what's happening to your credit balance at all times.
You can upgrade, downgrade, or change the billing interval any time from the Account and billing menu under the Profile button in FreeLimbs, or from Paddle's Customer Portal, which will be released very soon.
You can change your payment details any time from the Account and billing menu under the Profile button in FreeLimbs, or from Paddle's Customer Portal, which will be released very soon.
You can pause your subscription any time from the Account and billing menu under the Profile button in FreeLimbs, or from Paddle's Customer Portal, which will be released very soon.
You can pause your subscription immediatelly, or at the end of the billing period (recommended).
If you know when you'll be back, you can also schedule for your subscription to resume automatically after 1, 2, or 3 months.
If you pause your subscription immediately, you will lose access to the app until you resume the subscription. Also, you are not going to be refunded the prorated amount of what's left until the end of the billing period.
You can resume your paused subscription any time from the Account and billing menu under the Profile button in FreeLimbs, or from Paddle's Customer Portal, which will be released very soon.
When you resume your paused subscription, you will regain access to the app, and will be charged immediately the full price of your paused subscription plan.
If you need to take a break from the app (e.g. going on summer vacation), you can pause your subscription instead of canceling it. See Can I pause my subscription in this FAQ.
You can cancel your subscription any time from the Account and billing menu under the Profile button in FreeLimbs, or from Paddle's Customer Portal, which will be released very soon.
You can cancel your subscription immediatelly, or at the end of the billing period (recommended).
If you cancel your subscription immediately, you will lose access to the app, your subscription will be cancelled permanently, and you will not be able to reinstate it — you would have to purchase a new subscription. Also, you are not going to be refunded the prorated amount of what's left until the end of the billing period.
Not at the moment, but please let us know if you want one, and if there's a significant interest we might reconsider.
Live feedback
The "Live feedback" feature provides real-time feedback and after-practice analysis on your timing, dynamics, precision, and unison accuracy.
To use it, you should have an electronic kit which offers USB or MIDI out connectivity.
Live feedback works only on devices running a browser supporting the WebMIDI standard, e.g. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla FireFox. Some Chromium-based browsers might support it as well, for example Brave and Arc do.
On Android smartphones and tablets, the feature works in browsers supporting the standard, such as Google Chrome, Samsung Internet, and Opera Mobile.
On Macs, Apple Safari does not support the standard, but you can run FreeLimbs in a browser that does, for example Chrome or Firefox.
iOS devices, like iPad and iPhone do not support the standard, and installing a different browser on these devices will not work around the issue. Apple refuses to implement the full WebMIDI standard because it has some security issues, but the company doesn't seem to be interested in implementing a read-only subset of the standard either.
Here are two different tables showing the browsers that support the standard.
You can connect to your electronic kit using USB or "MIDI out" cable. If you have both, prefer the one with the lower latency. Latency is the delay you experience between hitting the drums and the signal being received on the device running FreeLimbs.
Some vendors might require you to install software drivers on your computer and change some settings on your drums. Find out if that's required by your vendor and follow their instructions to connect the drums to your computer.
Watch this video to learn how to connect to your drums, and how to use the "Live feedback" feature in FreeLimbs.
When you have successfully connected your electronic drums to the device running FreeLimbs, you'll see a MIDI button displayed in the exercise view (except in the Preview step). If you don't see the MIDI button in FreeLimbs, your electronic drums could not be recognized, and you'd have to troubleshoot this. You could be using a browser (or device - iPhone or iPad) which doesn't support the WebMIDI standard, a problem with the cable, your USB driver could be set to VENDOR (see below), or other issue. Consult the troubleshooting documentation for your electronic drums.
Some drum module vendors might require you to install a software driver on your computer to recognize your drums, and might
ask you to switch your USB driver in the drum module from GENERIC to VENDOR.
The default setting is GENERIC, and if you do switch to VENDOR, your drums might not be recognized on mobile
devices like Android smartphones and tablets. It should still work on desktop & laptop computers.
Simply remember to switch between VENDOR and GENERIC if you're using FreeLimbs on multiple devices, and FreeLimbs
doesn't display the MIDI button in the exercises.
The first time you start practicing an exercise in FreeLimbs, your browser will display a notification about FreeLimbs requesting MIDI access on your device. The actual message may vary from browser to browser. On Chrome it's going to read "freelimbs.com wants to use your MIDI devices" or "freelimbs.com wants to control and reprogramme your MIDI devices".
Don't worry, FreeLimbs will not reprogram anything, it just needs read access to receive MIDI messages from your electronic drums. FreeLimbs only uses two WebMIDI functions:
- to enumerate your MIDI devices, so you can select your electronic drums from the list, and
- to listen on your electronic drums for MIDI note & control messages.
If you have accidentally blocked MIDI access, you can restore it from your browser's settings. These again vary from browser to browser, here's how you can do it in Chrome.
When you successfully connect your drums in FreeLimbs, it will prompt you to calibrate them, so it can determine the MIDI audio latency and compensate for it in the app. Follow the instructions in FreeLimbs.
You might need to calibrate to compensate for the MIDI latency more than once. The latency could change due to restarting your drum module or computer, unplugging & replugging the cable, switching between your laptop and mobile device, changing the cable brand or length, and other factors. If you feel you're playing spot on, but FreeLimbs shows that you're dragging or missing hits, you should recalibrate.
Watch this video to see how easy it is to calibrate your drums in FreeLimbs.
Some electronic drums can detect the position of the stick on the drum surface when you strike it. For example, Roland TD-25 has positional sensing on the snare head, and TD-50 has positional sensing on the tom heads as well.
FreeLimbs can and will use this information to detect the precision of your hits on the drums.
At the moment, FreeLimbs only supports Control Change aka Continuous Controller (CC) message (command 0xB, 11 decimal)
on the General Purpose controller (number 16) with the center area of the drum head starting at 0 and the
far edge at 127. If your electronic kit transmits the position information in any other way, please contact us at
feedback@freelimbs.com, and we'll do our best to add
support for your drums.
1. Timing
A Perfect hit is registered when the time of your strike drifts from the expected time between 0% and 5% of the
micro time to play a note.
The micro time depends on the number of notes and the tempo. It equals the time needed to play the notes on the grid, divided by their number. For example, if you're playing sixteenth notes on an 8-note grid (so half a measure or bar) at 60bpm, then the entire grid of 8 notes will take 2 seconds for the 2 beats (2 beats x 4 sixteenth notes = 8 notes). The micro time to play 1 of the 8 notes will be 2 seconds divided by 8 notes = 0.25 seconds or 250 milliseconds.
In the example above, a perfect hit will be registered if you hit 12.5 milliseconds (5% * 250ms) earlier or later than the hit is expected, i.e. the drift is +/- 12.5 milliseconds.
An acceptable hit is within 10% (25 ms in the example above). Dragging and rushing is within 20% (50
ms). Anything else is considered a missed hit.
2. Dynamics
Perfect velocity (or volume) is within 10% of the expected hit's velocity, and acceptable is within 20%.
Everything else is considered louder (if above 20%) or softer (below 20%). The calculation of dynamics
accuracy uses volume ranges (e.g. a normal hit is piano to mezzo-forte, not a specific number), so it's a lot more
forgiving.
3. Precision
If your electronic drums do not support positional sensing, your hit accuracy will be measured only in terms of hitting the head (precise) vs catching the rim (imprecise).
If your drums support positional sensing, here's how it is used by FreeLimbs to assess your precision.
On the snare drum, if the expected hit is a ghost (soft, grace, unaccented) note, you can hit the snare drum anywhere you want, and FreeLimbs will count this as a precise hit. The reason for this is that most drummers typically play ghost notes off-center, because it sounds better.
If the expected hit is a normal strike, an accent, a rimshot, or the instrument is one of the toms, the
positional sensor's value is consulted. The value for the center area of the drum is 0 or
close to 0, and grows towards the edge up to 127. The precision percentage is calculated using the following
formula: (127 - value) / 127 * 100. For example, if you hit the center of the drum (value is 0), the
precision percentage is going to be (127 - 0) / 127 * 100 = 100%. If you hit off-center and the value is 42,
then the precision will be (127 - 42) / 127 * 100 = approximately 67%.
If the value drifts up to 10% off the center area, the hit is considered precise. If it's within 15% —
acceptable, otherwise imprecise.
4. Unison accuracy
A unison in drumming means striking two or more instruments with your limbs at the same time, for example playing the hi-hat with your right hand, and the snare drum with your left hand. Some unisons could require striking with all of your four limbs simultaneously.
A perfect unison is registered when any of the hits by a single limb drifts at most 5% from the rest of the
unison hits.
An acceptable unison is registered when the drift between the hits by all limbs is at most 10%.
A percentage bigger than 10% will mark the unison as missed.
To avoid neck strain or injury, never put your device to any side of your body. The device should be facing you frontally.
If you have a laptop, you can use a portable laptop stand. For tablets, a music sheet stand works great. For smartphones, you can use any clipper/holder to attach your phone to your toms rack or a cymbal stand. You can find all of these cheaply everywhere, and they're a great investment for your well-being.
Make sure the device is close enough, so you don't need to hump and bend forward to see it clearly.
Not at the moment, and probably not in the future. Although you can trigger your acoustic drums, that won't work well for any of your cymbals, which might and will rotate and sway as you play them. There are other issues, for example detecting how open or closed is the hi-hat, etc. Having said that, let us know, and if there's a significant interest in supporting this, we might reconsider.
Affiliate program
If you're digging FreeLimbs & have your own fans or followers, you can become an affiliate, help us grow, and earn money along the way.
Registration takes 1 to 2 minutes, and we will automatically approve your affiliate application, so you can immediately start spreading the word and earn.
FreeLimbs uses Tolt's affiliate program.
You'll be paid 30% on all paid referrals (subscription purchases).
For monthly subscriptions, you will be paid 30% of the selected monthly subscription plan's price, minus 10% automatic discount we'll gift to your audience on your behalf. As long as the person you referred has an active (and uninterrupted) subscription for FreeLimbs, you will keep receiving a payout every month, for a maximum of 6 months. If the person you referred upgrades or downgrades their monthly subscription plan, your payout will increase or decrease accordingly.
For annual (yearly) subscriptions, you will be paid 30% of the annual subscription plan's price, minus 10% automatic discount we'll gift to your audience on your behalf. You will receive a single payout.
Small payout processing fees, ranging from 0% to 2%, are covered by you, based on the payout method you select. These are automatically deducted from your payouts by Tolt.
Payouts can be sent to over 150 countries in 60+ currencies via PayPal, Wise, or wire transfer.
You can set up your preferred payout method when you register as an affiliate. You can change that any time from the dashboard.
Here's more information about how Tolt payouts work.
We use net 30 payment terms, leaving some space for certain payment reversals, which happen sometimes.
You will receive your affiliate commissions every 30 days, ensuring a consistent and timely income stream.
You will only be paid when your earnings are higher than the minimum payout threshold, $20.