Recording lanes

Recording lanes aren’t on the web, which doesn’t play recordings: open the song in Stab on a Mac, a PC, an iPad, an iPhone or Android.

Bring a recording in

Choose Import Recording… (⌘I)Import Recording… (Ctrl+I)Import Recording… (not on Web), from the File menu—, and pick an audio or video file. It comes in as a lane under the song’s tracks, named after the file, starting at the song’s start. You can also drop a recording onto the song. A video’s sound plays in the lane, and its picture shows in the Video pane (below). A video with no sound track (a screen recording, a muted clip) comes in as picture only, with no lane.

A song can have several recordings, each in its own lane. The song refers to each file where it is, so keep it in place. If one has moved when the song opens, Stab looks beside the song, then asks where it went.

Play along

Play, the loop and the caret work as they do for the song: the recording plays from the same moment, exactly with your parts, and goes round the loop without a click.

At a practice speed the recording slows down or speeds up with the song, its pitch kept. Playing in another key transposes it too.

Line it up

• Move it in time: drag its waveform left or right, until its first beat lands on the song’s.
• Volume: click the recording’s name, in its tag over the start of the waveform, and drag the card’s Volume; double-click it for the recording’s own level.
• Mute: click M in the recording’s tag, as a track’s, or choose Mute in the lane’s menu. A recording that leads the song’s tempo says Leads beside it, and the tempo in the Editor’s corner is tinted while it does.

A recording whose tempo drifts (most played without a click) needs more than a shift: sync pins tie the song’s beats to moments in the recording, and the lane’s menu has Find the Beats to place them for you.

The lane’s menu

Right-click the lane for its menu: Mute, who leads (Recording Leads, Tab Leads) and Delete All Pins, Find the Beats, Write Tab from Audio, Find the Chords, Separate into Stems, and Remove Recording. Holding ⇧ as you drag along the waveform picks a stretch of it, for those to listen to alone.

A recording with a picture shows it as it plays, at the moment you hear, at any speed. While you drag a sync pin, it shows the pin’s moment, so you can line up what you see (a pick hitting a string) with its beat.

The Video pane

A Video pane shows the song’s video filling the pane, the recording’s name under it. Choose Video as a pane’s kind from its pane bar. The built-in Transcribe workspace has one beside the Editor and the Score. With no video in the song, it says so and where to import one. Stopped, it shows the moment at the Editor’s caret.

A video file with a picture and no sound track (a screen recording, a muted clip, a lesson filmed without sound) comes in as picture only: no lane under the tracks and nothing in the Mixer, since there’s nothing to hear. The Video pane plays it with the song: play, the caret, the loop, the count-in and the practice speed move it as they move a recording.

Bring it in

Choose Import Recording… (⌘I)Import Recording… (Ctrl+I)Import Recording… (not on Web) and pick the video, or use A Video in the home’s Bring a Song In. Dropping it onto the song works too. Under the picture, its name says Picture only, and a note says so once as it comes in. Nothing about the song changes: its tempo, its bars and its tracks stay as they were, and the video starts at bar 1.

A Video makes a new song around it: as soon as you choose the file, the dialog says it has no sound track. Find the beats and pin the bars needs a sound track, so it’s off, and the dialog asks for the song’s Tempo instead (120 to begin with). The song gets enough bars to hold the whole video.

A song has one video with no sound: importing a second replaces the first (Undo brings it back). It shows in the Video pane before a recording’s picture.

Where it starts

The picture keeps its own seconds: it isn’t stretched to the bars, so set the song’s tempo to the video, not the other way round. Its start is the one thing to line up, from the Starts at chip under the picture:

• Start at the Caret: its first frame lands where the caret is.
• Line Up This Frame at the Caret: play to the frame you want (the teacher counting in), stop, put the caret on bar 1, and this frame moves there.
• − and + beside its start move it a frame at a time (⌥: a tenth of a second) (Alt: a tenth of a second); click the start to type a time.
• Back to Bar 1.

Each change is one undo step; nudges in a row are one. Before its start the first frame waits, dimmed, saying where it starts; past its end the last frame stays, saying where it ended.

Replace or remove it

Right-click the picture, or its card, or open the Video pane’s ⚙, for Start at the Caret, Line Up This Frame at the Caret, Replace Video…, Show in Finder, Show in File Explorer and Remove Video. Replace Video… keeps its start; a file with sound takes its place as a recording lane. A file with neither a picture nor a sound track can’t come in, and Stab says so.

The song refers to the video where it is, as to any recording. In Stab Cloud and Play Together it travels as recordings do; someone without the file sees the pane say it isn’t on their device.

A video with no sound track plays in a Video pane on the Mac, Windows and the iPad. The web opens a song that has one, without it.

The Video pane isn’t on the web, except for a song’s YouTube video.