16. Playing and practising

Listen

Listen teaches the timing. The song plays on at its tempo, without waiting, and every note you play on your part is scored against the written one. Use it once you know the notes, to see how close to the beat you play.

Listen: practice that scores

Available on every platform.

Starting

Choose Listen (⌃⌥⌘L)Listen (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L)Listen (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L (⌥⇧⌘L on a Mac)), or open the Practice band with Practice… and pick Listen. The band names your part (‹ and › pick another track) and what it listens to: a MIDI instrument, else the audio input when it’s on (Practising by microphone). With neither, the song plays as written and the band says so. Then play, or press Start in the band. Wait for Me explains the part and the band in more detail.

Your part’s written notes are silent while you play it; Hear the Part in the band plays them along as a guide.

Timing

A note you play matches a written one when it’s the right pitch (on drums, the right piece) and close enough in time. How close is the band’s Timing option, which you tap to change:

• Easy: within 70 milliseconds.
• Normal: within 40 milliseconds.
• Hard: within 25 milliseconds.

Time is measured as you hear it: at a slower speed, the window is the same number of milliseconds.

Results on the notes

Each note gets a dot under it in the Editor and the Score, kept until the pass is over:

• Green: on time, within half the window.
• Amber: early or late, but inside the window.
• Red: missed. The window went by and you didn’t play it.
• Blue: the right pitch on another string. This shows only with a MIDI guitar, which says which string you played; it counts as played.

A note you play that matches nothing is an extra: a red cross at the top edge of the lanes, where you played it.

The pass

Each lap of the loop, each pass of a playlist step, or the song played to its end is a pass. The pill over the pane shows its score as you play: the notes you hit as a share of the part’s notes plus your extras, and how early or late you played on average (“Listen · Guitar · 92 % · late 12 ms”). When you stop, it shows the last pass. A pass at 90 % or more is clean.

Passes are kept in the song’s practice log and charted in the Playlist pane: see Progress. Two clean passes in a row can move the speed up for you: see The speed trainer.

Listen works while you play together, unlike Wait for Me and Follow Me.

A playlist step can practise Listen on its own (its menu’s Practice › Listen), and Until a Clean Pass keeps it going until you play it at 90 % or more. See Playlists and practice steps.