At the conservatory where I teach, I often see the students have difficulty learning a good beating technique. In the books on beating technique there are pictures of beating patterns. These pictures indicate the directions in which to move. But they do not indicate the speed of the movements. The pictures cannot convey the ‘bounce’ in the beat. Therefore, the use of the books in learning a good beating technique is limited.
I often thought: wouldn’t it be helpful is the computer could show the beating movements? Students could then study the movements extensively and try to copy it. In the past years I started such an application several times, but I bared time and knowledge for such a computer animation. Fortunately, I succeeded in making the animation this time.
You can see the animation at work here (I’m sorry the options are described in Dutch). The basic movement is the so-called anchor movement, in which all beating points lie on the same spot. In the animation you may vary the distance between the beating points, by which the patters attain a more wavy character.