Fingering Diagram Builder, version 0.8

I’m pleased to announce a new release of the Fingering Diagram Builder.

One thing I wanted to do in this release is give something back to the very generous and sexy people who have been kind enough to use the PayPal donation link to show their support over the years, so I’ve added some special exclusive features for donors. Most of those features are geared toward those doing large or involved projects, such as for publication.

To be clear, none of the old features have been put behind a paywall, and with this release and future releases I’ll keep working on improvements for the free users, too. And you can get the donors-only features with a one-time donation of literally any amount of your choice. (If you’ve donated before, you can try the “Are you a previous donor?” link to activate your special features, but you might have to email me so I can fix it for you manually, especially if your donation was a few years ago.)

Anyway, here’s what’s new:

  • Some weird/cool new key sets like Kingma-system flutes, the Redgate oboe, and the Contraforte. I’m flying a little blind on those since I don’t exactly have those instruments laying around, so if you’re an expert let me know what tweaks are needed.
  • Downloads in .gif format (in addition to the previously-available .png and .tif). For some purposes .gifs won’t look as nice as .pngs, but the file sizes are very compact, which is useful in some situations. And for donors, you can also download in .svg format, which gives you basically unlimited scalability with no loss of image quality. .Png and .svg downloads also now get lossless compression, which you can turn off if for some reason you want to.
  • Diagrams can be rotated 90° in either direction. Donors can also mirror them, which I think is a strange idea but lots of people have requested it.
  • Image backgrounds can be white (like before), or now also transparent.
  • Some more flexibility for donors: finer control of image size and line thickness, and an editable color palette. Donors also have some new options for how images are cropped.
  • You can still, as before, let the FDB automatically provide unique filenames for your downloaded images or name each one manually. But now you can also type placeholders: %i to auto-insert the name of the current instrument, %k for the key set, and %c for an auto-incrementing counter. It’s hard to explain, but try it out and I think you’ll see it’s pretty easy and useful.
  • In addition to downloading images to your device or uploading to Dropbox, you can also post them to Imgur. That gives you quick-and-easy shareability of images on all the social media sites, and you don’t need to create an account or anything.
  • People have been rightfully baffled for years by the powerful but undocumented “Keywork details” thing. That hasn’t gone away, but many of the instruments now have a more user-friendly interface for turning certain keys on or off. I hope to add to and refine these interfaces in response to the continuing frustrated emails. It has also become abundantly clear that, while I’ve tried to make everything as intuitive as possible, it’s time for a help page.
  • The FDB can, if you like, remember the fingering you were working on in a previous session. (This feature is turned off by default.) I don’t expect that many people need multiple visits to the FDB to complete one fingering diagram, but it’s handy if, say, you accidentally navigate away.
  • Once again, a thorough visual refresh and lots of little interface tweaks.
  • This one is boring but important: basically a ground-up rebuild of the FDB’s guts, using smarter coding than I knew how to do nearly nine years ago when I first released it. (For the code-savvy, I’ve replaced my spaghetti jQuery code with slightly-less-pasta-like Vue.js code.) That will hopefully help keep it running reliably and maintainably on modern web browsers for the better part of another decade.

Please do check it out, and send me your bug reports and other feedback.

Discount on book and new t-shirts

I’ll keep this short: there are new bretpimentel.com t-shirts available, and everything in the store (shirts and the PDF of my book, Woodwind Basics) is priced at 1/3 off through Christmas Eve 2018 if you use coupon code reeds2018. Your purchases help pay for hosting and other site costs, and otherwise support what I’m doing … Read more

Recital videos, August 2018

Here are some videos from my recent Delta State University faculty recital. I enjoyed tackling Brett Wery’s challenging Sonata for multiple woodwinds (flute, clarinet, alto saxophone) and piano, plus some little oboe pieces and the André Previn bassoon sonata. As always, the goal was to challenge myself, so, as always, the performance had some hiccups. But … Read more

Recording: Claude T. Smith Suite with Delta State Wind Ensemble

A few months ago I got to perform Claude T. Smith’s Suite for Solo Flute, Clarinet, and Alto Saxophone with the Delta State University Wind Ensemble, conducted by Dr. Erik Richards. It’s a fun showpiece for a woodwind doubler with band, which I’ve had a few opportunities to perform over the last 10 years. The … Read more

Tenth anniversary

Today makes ten years since I started the blog. At the five-year mark I did a little retrospective, and I don’t think there’s much need to do it again. Basically the things I was excited about and proud of then are the things I’m excited about and proud of now. Other than publishing my book, … Read more

2017 in review

Here are some highlights from the blog in 2017. The top new posts in terms of traffic and social sharing were: Review: D’Addario Select Jazz tenor saxophone mouthpieces Please lose the music binder Quick flute switches and embouchure problems for woodwind doublers Advice on graduate performance study and university teaching careers Buy intonation, not tone … Read more

Jazz recital videos, August 2017

This year I played all jazz at my Delta State University faculty recital. Program and some selected videos are below. I’m very much a part-time jazz player, so it was fun to spend the summer trying to get my chops in shape to play tunes in a variety of styles on a variety of instruments. … Read more

Random Note Picker, version 0.3

The Random Note Picker web app got a facelift and a few new features. I use this mostly for quizzing my students on their scales. Two features added by popular request: a timer function, so you can generate new groups of random notes every few seconds hands-free, and (optional) double-flats/double-sharps. Check it out, and send … Read more

New book! Woodwind Basics: Core concepts for playing and teaching flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone

I’m pleased to announce the release of my book, Woodwind Basics: Core concepts for playing and teaching flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. I wrote it with woodwind methods/techniques classes in mind, but I think it also works well as a reference for private teachers at any level, or for woodwind players, especially woodwind doublers.