Lessons that finish, and a highway that fits
The first week after launch went on how lessons sound rather than what they teach. A pattern used to stop; now it ends. Plus a new lesson, a highway you can resize, and colours that mean one thing each.
Lessons finish instead of stopping
Every pattern now lands on the bar line that follows it. Whatever you play on beat one sounds once more at the very end, and the bass arrives on the root note underneath it — after the drums have stopped, so you hear it on its own. Before this a run simply ran out of notes and the backing was left hanging mid-phrase.
A hi-hat to lean on
Four early lessons had no hi-hat in them at all, which left you counting in silence between your own hits. Those now have one ticking underneath — audible, but not yours to play and never scored. On a kit the hat is the voice that never stops and everything else is heard against it; that is what it is doing here.
Pick your highway size
The scrolling highway was always fullscreen. A button in the transport bar now cycles compact, medium and full: a thin band with only the notes moving, the same band at double height, or lanes stretched to fill the screen. It is safe to change mid-run and is remembered across lessons.
Colours that mean one thing
Notes are coloured by which drum they are, and then recoloured by how well you hit them. Those two vocabularies overlapped: an unplayed kick was the exact shade of green as a well-timed one. Drum colours have moved to blues, violets and pinks, and green, amber and red now mean nothing but your timing.
A new lesson, and a better bassline
4.5 Paradiddle Groove is written: the same sticking as 4.4, with a kick on beats one and three underneath, which is the step from rudiment to groove. And the very first lesson has a new bass part — the old one played the same four beats as your kick, so it was inaudible under your own playing and dull besides. It now answers in the gaps between your hits.
Fixes
- The backing bass was silent on the first play on a new device — its samples had not finished loading and the notes were dropped. Lessons now wait for their own backing, and fetch it quietly in the background when you open a lesson.
- The result screen no longer shows a greyed-out Next lesson button next to Done. You get whichever one applies.
- Shared links now show a proper preview card, and the site has its own icon.
Follow @groove_academy for the next update, or go play something.