16. Playing and practising

The Instrument pane

The Instrument pane shows a track as you’d play it: a guitar’s or a bass’s notes on a fretboard, at the strings and frets the tab writes; a piano’s or a synth’s on a keyboard; a drum part on pads. While the song plays, each note lights as it’s heard and fades as it ends, and the notes coming next show as dashed rings a beat before. Stopped, it shows the notes at the caret, like a big chord diagram of whatever you’re looking at.

It’s also an instrument. Play it with your fingers, the mouse or the computer’s keyboard and you hear the track’s own sound. With Step or Record on, what you play is written into the song; with Edit on, a tap changes the notes at the caret.

The Instrument pane

Available on every platform.

Opening it

Which track it shows

The chip on the pane’s bar names the track and its tuning (“Guitar · E Standard”, “Bass · Drop D · Capo 2”). The Instrument always shows the caret’s track, the one a MIDI keyboard plays into:

• With a link colour (see The pane bar), it shows the caret of the panes in that colour: a blue Instrument under a blue Editor shows the track you’re working on there.
• Without one, it shows the track of the pane you last worked in.

The chip lists the guitars, basses, keys and drum tracks. Picking one moves the caret to it, so the panes linked with the Instrument go there too; a drum track shows as pads (if the face was set to the fretboard or the keyboard, it goes back to Auto, and the other way round). Touching the Instrument makes its track the one a MIDI keyboard plays, as clicking in it would. Neither arms a track nor turns recording on.

Fretboard, keyboard and pads

The switch at the right of the bar over the instrument (beside Play | Step | Edit on a phone) shows the face: a small neck for the fretboard, a small keyboard for the keyboard, and on a drum track a grid for the pads. Tap another to change it. Until you do, it follows the track: a fretboard for strings, a keyboard for keys and synths, pads for drums. The pane’s ⚙ has the same choice as Face, where Auto puts it back. A song with only a drum track shows its pads under any face, so there is always a way back.

A keys track on a fretboard is fretted near the hand; a guitar on a keyboard is shown by pitch, and what you play on those keys is fretted onto its strings when it’s written or recorded.

On a fretboard, the high string is on top and the nut on the left, as the tab writes them. Each string’s open note is named at the nut, and open strings light there. Strings have real gauges (plain ones silver, wound ones bronze), with inlays at 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, 19, 21 and 24. A capo shows as a bar, and fret numbers count from it unless you turn off Number Frets from the Capo. The ⚙ also has:

• Neck: Wood (the default) or Flat, in the Editor’s colours.
• Fret Spacing: Real narrows toward the body, softened so a high fret stays a finger wide; Even spaces them alike. Auto is Real, and Even on a phone.
• Orientation: Auto stands the neck upright in a pane much taller than it is wide (a phone held upright), the nut on top and the low string on the left, as chord diagrams draw it.

Left-handed? Turn on Left-handed fretboards in Settings › Editing: every fretboard is mirrored, the nut on the right.

The pads are one for each of the drum track’s lanes, in the order a kit is read from the top left: kick, snare, hi-hats, toms, then cymbals and percussion, each named and coloured by its family. They fill the pane in as many rows as make them largest: on a wide pane, nine pads stand in two rows of five and four. With Falling Notes on, they stand in one row along the bottom, under the fall. A pad flashes as it’s hit, brighter the harder the hit, and the readout says what’s struck (“Kick + Hi-Hat”) and what comes next. Tap or click a pad to hear its hit in the track’s sound; that writes nothing and isn’t recorded (the Drumpad writes hits). With Edit on, a tap on a pad adds or removes its hit at the caret instead (see Editing at the caret).

What lights up

• A note struck flashes with a white ring, then glows in its track’s colour while it sounds, its string glowing from the fret to the bridge.
• A chord lights as its shape, the strings it doesn’t play crossed at the nut. A strum lights string by string, its direction a streak at the body’s end.
• A slide moves along the string, leaving a trail. A bend pushes the dot across the string, its amount beside it (“½”, “full”). A hammer-on or pull-off draws an arc from the note before. Vibrato shakes the dot.
• The next notes show as dashed rings during the beat before they come.
• Other tracks (Other Tracks in ⚙): Auto shows them dim in their own colours on a keyboard and leaves them off a fretboard; Dim and Off choose. A fretboard only shows parts in the same tuning.

Over the instrument, the readout names the chord sounding, its frets from the low string (“x 0 2 0 1 0”) or a keyboard’s notes, and the next chord.

Labels

Labels in the Playing panel (below) chooses what the notes say; ⚙ › Labels has the same list:

• Frets and Fingers (the default): the finger where the song gives one (Fingering), else the fret. On a keyboard it’s C Only, and Fingers: the Cs named, and the fingers.
• Note Names (Every Note on a keyboard): each note’s name, E or C♯.
• Degrees from the Key: each note’s degree in the song’s key there (1, ♭3, 5, ♭7).
• Intervals from the Chord: each note’s interval from the root of the song’s chord there (R, 3, 5, ♭7), or its fret where there’s no chord.
• None.

Playing it

What you play sounds through the track’s own instrument, amp and effects, and goes where a MIDI keyboard’s notes go: it’s heard, recorded when Record is on, and written when Step is on. Otherwise, and unless Edit is on, playing never changes the song. While an Instrument pane is open, Settings › Audio & MIDI lists it as On-screen Instrument.

By touch, with as many fingers as you like (a pen plays as a finger):

• Fretboard: tap or hold a fret to pick that string, and lift to stop it. Tap left of the nut for the open string. Slide along the string for a slide, or push across it to bend. A second finger higher on the same string is a hammer-on, and lifting it a pull-off.
• The strum zone at the body’s end (“strum here”): swipe across the strings to strum, louder the faster you swipe. A flat tap there mutes what’s ringing.
• Keyboard: tap or hold keys, softer at the back of a key and louder at its front. Slide along the keys for a glissando. The strip of all 88 keys above them frames the keys in view: drag the frame to move it, tap elsewhere on the strip to go there, and pinch it to make the keys wider or narrower.

With the mouse: click to play; drag along the keys for a glissando, along a string to slide or across it to bend. ⌥-click (Alt-click) lets a note ring on. The wheel scrolls the frets or keys; pinching on a trackpad zooms around the pointer, and ⌘+ / ⌘− around the middle. A fixed range (below) always fits the pane.

The controls

The bar over the instrument has three parts. At the left, what sounds: the chord, its frets and the next chord. In the middle, what your playing does: Play | Step | Edit. At the right, how it looks: the face switch, the frets or keys in view, and Playing ▾.

Beside the instrument. On a wide, short pane, the controls go in columns beside the keys or the neck instead, which then take the pane’s whole height. The left column has what sounds (the chord, its frets and the next chord) over Play | Step | Edit; the right column has the face switch, the frets or keys in view with ‹ ›, a keyboard’s Sustain (a tall key for your thumb on a touch screen) or a fretboard’s Let Ring, and Playing ▾. The strip of all 88 keys stays over the keys. Where they go is yours to choose, in the pane’s ⚙ or in Settings › Editing: Controls is Auto (the default: beside the instrument when the pane is at least two and a half times as wide as it is tall and still shows two octaves or six frets), Top (always over it) or Sides (beside it whenever it fits). Sides chooses Both (what sounds and how you play at the left, how it looks at the right), Left or Right (both columns at that side). It’s kept on this device for every Instrument pane; a phone held upright keeps its rows.

• Play | Step | Edit chooses what your playing does. Play (the default) only plays: nothing is written. Step turns step input on (Writing and recording). Edit edits the notes at the caret (Editing at the caret). One is always on; tap Play to stop writing. Over the pads there’s Play | Edit.
• ‹ › move the frets or keys in view, by two frets or an octave. The button between them names the range; tap it for Follow the Hand (the default), the whole neck, frets 0–12 or 12–24, the track’s range of keys, C3–C5 or C5–C7. Following keeps the frets or keys of the next two bars in view; scroll by hand and it pauses behind a Resume Following pill. Where the pane is narrow, the range and its arrows are in the Playing panel instead.
• Sustain (keyboard) holds what you play while it’s pressed. Double-tap it to latch it on, and tap again to let go. A MIDI sustain pedal lights it too.

Playing ▾ opens a panel of playing options. It stays open while you change as many as you like; Done, Esc or a tap outside it closes it. On a touch screen where the pane is short, the options take two columns, and when they still don’t fit, drag up or down in the panel to reach the rest.

• Strum (fretboard) chooses what a strum plays: Held Frets, the frets you hold with open strings elsewhere, or Song’s Chord, the song’s chord at the playhead in a common shape, so one finger can strum along. With Song’s Chord, the shape shows faintly on the neck, changing as the chords do.
• Let Ring (fretboard) keeps a note sounding after you lift your finger. A string left ringing, by this or by a strum, fades from the neck over about three seconds, as its sound dies away; a string under your finger stays lit.
• Sustain holds everything you play until you turn it off.
• Velocity chooses how loud a tap is: By Position on the key, Pressure (a pen’s), or fixed: Soft, Medium or Loud.
• Labels chooses what the notes say (see Labels).
• Frets Shown (Keys Shown on a keyboard) chooses the range in view, as the range button does.

Each Instrument pane keeps its own Strum, Let Ring, Velocity and zoom, saved with the song and carried by a workspace you save.

Writing and recording

Step turns step input on, lit while it’s on (tap Play to turn it off). What you play is then written at the caret, a step at a time, as from a MIDI keyboard (see Step input):

• It writes in the Editor or Score pane linked to the Instrument (the same colour), else the one you last worked in. With no Editor or Score open (a phone with the Instrument as the only tab), it writes at the song’s caret on the track it shows.
• On the fretboard, a note goes on the string and fret you touched; on the keyboard, a guitar track’s notes are fretted as a hand would play them. Notes held together are one chord, written when you let go. A hammer-on or pull-off is its own step, marked on the note before.
• A Score pane in note input writes what you play the same way, a guitar’s notes on the string you played.

Step also shows Record: a red ring before its word while recording is on for the song, a red dot, lit, while recording; tap Step or Play then to stop. Record and Capture take what you play as they take a MIDI instrument’s (see Recording MIDI): notes on the strings you played them on, a second finger as a hammer-on or pull-off, a slide along a string as a slide, a push across it as a bend. Each take is one undo step.

Editing at the caret

Edit changes the notes at the caret in place, as typing a fret in the Editor does. It works at the same caret as Step, but where Step writes and moves on, Edit leaves the caret where it is: move it with the arrow keys, the keypad, or a click in the Editor (with the Instrument pane clicked, ← and → move it a step).

• Fretboard: tap a string at a fret to set that string’s note at the caret. If the string has no note there, one is added, a step long; if it has one, it moves to the fret you tapped, keeping its length (its pitch follows). Tap the fret it’s on to remove it. A chord is edited one string at a time.
• Keyboard: tap a key to add that pitch to the chord at the caret, or to remove it if it’s already there. On a guitar track, a new note goes on a string the chord leaves free, near where the hand is.
• Pads: tap a pad to add its hit at the caret, or to remove it.

Turning Edit on (or Step) folds the tray’s Keypad to its tab, so one tool writes at a time; turning it off brings the Keypad back. With Edit on, the Instrument lights the notes that start at the caret, the ones a tap changes. What you add or change is heard, as a typed fret is, and each tap is one step to undo. Edit works while the song plays too: at the caret, or, when the Editor it writes in is set to Write at the Playhead While Playing (its ♪ chip), where the playhead is as you tap, on the grid, so you can refine a loop pass after pass; a tap where the same note already is takes it off, and each pass is one step to undo (see Step input). While recording, a tap plays as usual.

Falling Notes

On a keyboard or the pads, turn on Falling Notes in ⚙ and the song’s notes fall onto the keys, each a bar as long as the note, landing on the line above the keys just as it’s heard. Hard-struck notes are brighter, soft ones paler. A piano part’s Left Hand falls in a colour of its own, and the bars carry what Labels says. Faint lines mark the beats and bars, with bar numbers and sections at the left and the chords coming at the right; other tracks fall dim behind. A fretboard has no falling notes.

• Look Ahead: 2, 4 (the default) or 8 beats, or 1 or 2 bars. At a slower practice speed the notes fall slower too.
• Keys Size (Pads Size): how much of the pane the keys take. Auto gives a tall pane to the fall.

The Instrument in the Practice and Play Along workspaces has its notes falling.

Scales, keys and chords

⚙ › Overlay puts faint dots on every place the notes of a scale, a key or a chord fall, under what the song plays. Each dot says its degree; the root is in brass.

• Song’s Key: the key at the playhead (a minor key as its natural minor), following the key as it changes.
• Scale: a scale you pick under Scale (major and the modes, the minors, the pentatonics, the blues, and the arpeggios of the common chords), on a Root, or the song’s key’s.
• Chord at Playhead: the song’s chord as it plays, each dot its interval from the root (R, 3, 5).
• On a fretboard, Position puts one box of the scale in front and dims the rest of the neck. Each box’s number is on its top edge: tap it to put that box in front, and again to see them all.

Practising on it

With Wait for Me or Listen on, the notes to play are ringed in brass on the neck, the keys or the pads, and the pass’s pill shows under the readout. With Falling Notes, the fall stops with those bars resting on the line above the keys until you play them. A note played right turns green, a wrong one shows as a red crossed dot for a moment, and Listen rings each note in its result’s colour as it’s judged.

The Instrument is also something to practise on: once you’ve played a note on it, practice listens to it as it would to a MIDI instrument, so you can practise a part with no instrument plugged in.

Latency

What you touch lights at once; the sound follows a few milliseconds later, as fast as the device allows. While an Instrument pane is open, Audio Buffer on Auto keeps the output’s buffer short (see Settings). Bluetooth headphones add about 200 ms, so play through the speaker or wired headphones; the pane says so once when it sees Bluetooth.

With a screen reader

With VoiceOver on a Mac, an iPad or an iPhone, TalkBack on Android, Narrator on Windows, or a screen reader in a browser, each key and each string and fret in view is its own element, named as you’d say it (“C4”, “A string, fret 5, D3”), with its state after it: playing, next, or in the scale. Activating one plays it for a moment, as a tap would, so it’s only written into the song when Step, Edit or Record is on. The controls (the face switch, Step Input, Edit at the Caret, the labels, Sustain, Strum, Let Ring, the range and its arrows, Velocity) are elements too. The pane’s description says what’s sounding, at most twice a second.