Aered

Drumming is one of those things that looks easy to do, but in truth, it's an activity that's way more challenging than first meets the eye.

Even though drumming might seem a lot easier to get into when compared to other, more complex instruments, a bit of help to get started can't hurt.

Aered is a very cool and surprisingly useful shareware app that's designed to help you learn the basics of drumming.

In short, Aered is a cross-platform (available for Windows and macOS) sheet music editor designed to help all aspiring drummers learn the basics as fast and as easily as possible.

The app's main focus? Drum notation. A point that the app's interface makes very clear. Aered has a straightforward, clutter-free, and very accessible GUI.

There are 4 main sections: the editor pane at the bottom of the main window, the layout pane at the top, the side menu on the left side, and the middle toolbar (which separates the layout and editor panes).

The editor pane is where you can edit your music notations. The Layout pane is the place where you can adjust the formatting and add text, as well as get a glimpse of the final typeset. As mentioned before, these two sections are separated by a bar.

This bar can be dragged vertically to adjust the sizes of said panes. You also get two sets of buttons on each side of the bar. The left set controls aspects of the layout pane, while the right allows you to adjust settings regarding the editor.

Last but not least, the side menu provides quick access to almost all operations this app supports. For example, you can open and save documents, undo changes, adjust preferences, and many more.

The biggest pro is without a doubt the fact that Aered is a shareware app (meaning you can opt to either use it for free or pay an amount of your choosing). The interface is not what one might call eye-catching, but it gets the job done nicely and is especially suited for beginner users.

Other advantages include a high-quality audio playback player, the ability to export your projects to PDF, as well as export the audio playback as a sound file. You can also import ASCII tab files, as well as smoothly pan and zoom anywhere on the GUI.

There's really not much to say one can dislike about this app. It's well-designed, it's easy to use, it offers a lot of useful options as a sheet music editor, and it has enough customization features to keep almost everyone happy. In short, a very good app for every aspiring drummer out there.