Repeat Beat Announcement
Sup y'all—Meet "RepeatBeat" (Beta)
I’ve been tinkering with an app idea for a while and I’m finally ready to launch the free beta. I’m calling it RepeatBeat for now (I’ll probably change the name later—if you have suggestions for a URL I can actually buy, let me know, because I feel like I’ve tried everything).
The Problem: How to Clean Choreography Faster
When I was running First Class Bhangra, I realized my practice workflow usually boiled down to two specific things when I was cleaning the team:
- Slowing down the music for dance: I’d drop the speed just a bit—usually to about 92% and then titrate up as they got more comfortable. When dancers first learn choreo, they often “cheat” the ends of beats and switch to the next step too early. Slowing it down forces you to think about movements more deliberately and get comfortable doing the full step. As the science shows: “If you want to go fast, go slow.”
- Using a music looper for rehearsals: You waste a massive amount of time getting dancers to regroup after every run. Usually, the music ends, people start chatting, and someone has to fumble with a phone to manually scrub back. You might overshoot or undershoot the timing, and it’s just annoying. I wanted the music to loop over and over without me touching a thing.
Why VLC isn't a great Music Player for Dancers
My old solution was VLC player. It’s a great tool, but it’s definitely not an intuitive dance practice app. You have to remake your loops every single time you open the app, there’s no way to save them, and it’s just clunky on a phone.
I wanted a lightweight choreography tool that does two things—loops and speed control—and does them perfectly.
RepeatBeat Key Features
- Custom Named Loops: Upload your mix and make as many loops as you want. Name them whatever you need: “Jhummar,” “Dhammal,” or even “Sid’s f*** up” for those 8 beats he keeps missing.
- Cloud-Based Saving: It’s a free web app for dancers—just use your Google login. Your loops will auto-save to your “My Library” tab.
- Google Drive Integration: Load your mix directly from a shared team Drive. No need to manually upload or store files on your device.
- Instant Sharing: If you’re the captain, you can share a link with your dancers. They copy the link, upload the audio file, and boom—they have your exact loops and practice marks.
- Easy Speed Adjustment: Just hit the + or – buttons to toggle between slow-tempo cleaning and performance speed.
RepeatBeat works great on both mobile and desktop. Since it’s a web app, there’s nothing to download—it just runs in your browser.
I’m keeping it free for now while I work out the kinks. I’ll probably have to charge a little something eventually just to cover the website and server costs, but for now, it’s on the house. Huge thank you to my Patreon supporters for subsidizing cool projects like this while they’re under development.
If you run into any bugs, let me know. In the meantime, I hope this helps your practice workflow.
Happy Dancing.
