The Dev Behind DBZDrums

I am an engineer, and I have been working with software development for more than 25 years. I started while I was still at university, back in 1998, working with Linux, the Linux kernel, embedded systems, and a language that very few people knew at the time: Python.

Over the years, I created many personal projects to solve personal problems. Most of them stopped there. Building a product from scratch and making it available to other people is almost a full-time job by itself, and I never had the resources to focus only on that.

Recently, I decided to learn a new musical instrument. I chose the drums. At 44, I had my first contact with the most basic grooves.

During that process, one difficulty kept showing up: I wanted to create musical reference maps to guide me while playing a song that was not fully settled in memory yet.

The goal was not to write long, precise scores. I needed compact notes that were enough to remind me of the structure and rhythmic ideas of songs I had already studied in more detail before.

I tried a few options, including MuseScore, which is a fantastic project for creating clean and precise notation. But it has a reasonable learning curve, and it did not give me, in a simple way, the specific workflow I wanted for this kind of note-taking.

So for quite a while, my best friend was the good old music notebook with staff paper, pencil, and eraser. Even though writing each map took time, it had everything I needed: structure, rhythm notes, comments, and a compact way to look up the song.

The problem was that, between mistakes, fixes, and corrections, the chart often became messy. Many times I had to rewrite the whole thing.

Organization was another problem. The charts were written in the notebook in the order I learned the songs, not necessarily in the order of a setlist. And flipping through a notebook between songs during a show is not exactly performance-friendly.

Today, combining my experience in software development, a practical problem I know well, and the arrival of AI tools that can help with the development process, I decided to create DBZDrums.

At first, it was going to be just a prototype for my own use. In a way, there is still a bit of that in it. But I realized it could become more than that. This problem is probably not only mine. And if even a tiny fraction of the world’s population has the same need, DBZDrums could help a few thousand people.

That is how DBZDrums is being born.

It still has a lot to improve, many planned features, and it is under active development. But the core idea is already there: a practical tool for building compact, reusable drum charts that are useful for studying and playing songs.

If you made it this far and think DBZDrums might help you, follow this page. You can also email me at [email protected] and tell me what you think, and what improvements you would like to see in the project.

Every positive comment and suggestion is very welcome. If it is within reach, and if it does not compromise the evolution and ideals of the project, I will do my best to include those ideas in the plan.

Soon I will add more information about DBZDrums and the future I hope for it.

DBZDrums Dev