1. Getting started

Finding help

This site is Stab’s help: a page for each part of the app, written for the platform you pick at the top of the page. In the app, the keyboard shortcuts card lists the keys, and About Stab tells you which version you have.

Stab Help

Available on every platform.

Stab Help is this Reference, at stab.audio/help. Use the search field at the top of any page, or browse the chapters, starting with this one.

Each page follows the platform you pick: the keys, menu names and steps change to match it, and a feature that isn’t on your platform says so under its heading. To compare platforms side by side, see Editions and platforms.

In the app, Stab Help, in the Help menuthe Help menu or the home’s Help button (?), opens these pages in your browser, set to your platform.

Help is also where you are:

• The ? on a pane’s bar, and the one in the header of its ⚙ panel, open the page for that kind of pane. See The pane bar.

Learn Stab, the Welcome sheet and the welcome tour

Available on every platform.

Learn Stab is a shelf on the home: a card for each thing to learn, with a picture and the video’s length, its name, one line of what you’ll learn, and a tick once you’ve done it on this device (beside the heading, how many you’ve watched: “2 of 6 watched”). Its first six are short videos, in this order: Write a riff in tab, Hear and practise, Read Music from a PDF or photo, Tab from a recording (in the apps), Play Together and The Instrument and Falling Notes. Then come One song, many views, Bring a song in and Chords and a band, and one of your own answer’s: Practice that listens or The score’s pages. More › beside the heading shows every card.

Choosing a card opens it, video first:

• The video, 30 to 60 seconds, silent and captioned. It plays from the internet, so it needs a connection.
• Try It does the thing for real in a song and puts a card over it saying what to try. On Write a riff in tab and Chords and a band it starts a new song from the Guitar or the Chord Chart template: without a licence or Stab Cloud, that’s one of your 3 free songs, and the card says so. The Chord Chart song already has four chords in it, twice, so play the song and the band plays them; type your own over them. Hear and practise opens the Welcome demo; looping and the practice speed are for your own songs, so without a licence or Stab Cloud, Try It keeps the demo in My Songs first (one of your 3 free songs), and the card says so above it.
• A sample, where it needs a file: a page of printed music for Read Music (a photo where Read Music is installed, else a PDF), a Guitar Pro and a MIDI file for Bring a song in, and a recording for Tab from a recording. The sample is shown with its name and what it is, and Open the Sample opens it; with two, choose one, then Open a Sample. Use My Own File… beside it opens one of yours instead. The samples are ours and come with the app. A sample opens as your own file would (a new song, so one of your 3 free songs without a licence or Stab Cloud), then a card says what to do next:
  • The Guitar Pro sample opens in the Score with TAB workspace, the way a tab editor lays a song out.
  • Where Read Music is installed, the photo is read as you watch: the page is straightened and cleaned, then read into the song. A PDF is read as it opens. The card comes once the reading is done and its sheet is put away; its Review takes the bars Read Music wasn’t sure of one at a time.
• Read More opens its page here, and Next: … opens the next card.

The card over a song (a hint) has at most one button for the thing it teaches, Read More, and × to put it away. It shows once for a song.

Nothing about the checks leaves the device. Hide puts the shelf away; Learn Stab, in the Help menuthe Help menu or the home’s Help button (?), brings it back, and Welcome Tour shows the welcome tour again.

The pages in this chapter cover the same ground: The home, Panes and Workspaces.

Search commands

To find a command, a setting or a view by name, and run it from there, use Search commands: Search Commands…, in the Help menuthe Help menu or the title bar.

The keyboard shortcuts card

In an Editor or Score pane, Keyboard Shortcuts (?) (?) shows a card of what the keys do in that pane. Press a key or click to put it away. It’s also in the Help menu. See Keyboard shortcuts.

What’s new in Stab

Available on every platform.

About Stab and its licences

Available on every platform.

• About Stab, in the Stab menuthe Help menuthe Help menu or the home’s Help button (?), shows the version of Stab you’re running and its credits. Give the version when you report a problem. About Stab, in the Stab menuthe Help menuthe Help menu or the home’s Help button (?), opens Settings › Privacy at About Stab: the Version you’re running (give it when you report a problem), Contact, which writes to [email protected], and Bluesky, Stab’s news at @stab.audio.

• Acknowledgements, in the Help menuthe Help menu or the home’s Help button (?), opens stab.audio/acknowledgements: every piece of other people’s work that Stab uses, such as fonts, sounds and libraries, with its licence.

• Licence FilesLicence Files (not on Web), in the Help menu, shows the licence files that come with the app on disk. On the Mac and Windows, Licence Files also shows the licence files that come with the app; elsewhere the Acknowledgements page has them all.

• In Settings › Privacy, under About Stab, Privacy Policy and Terms of Use open those pages on stab.audio.

• Stab is on Bluesky at @stab.audio, for news and release notes; the foot of every help page links to it.