10. The Stage

The Stage

The Stage is the song as players read it while they play: big, high-contrast, and always showing what comes next. A band rehearsing reads the chord chart, a singer the words, a child one chord at a time, a reader the notation. Nothing on it is edited; its pane’s ⚙ sets what it shows.

The Stage pane

Available on every platform.

Opening the Stage

Make any pane a Stage from the view picker on its bar (Panes), or choose the Play Along workspace, which puts the Stage beside the tracks and the transport. The play-along demos open in it.

What it follows

The Stage reads the song as it will play: through the loop when it’s on, through a playlist’s steps and their passes, so what it shows next is always what will be heard next, never a bar that won’t play. Stopped, it shows where the caret is.

Chords are the song’s own (its Chords track or its chord symbols). Where the song has none, the Stage names them from the notes; turn Guess Chords from the Notes off to leave those bars without. A song with nothing in it says “Nothing to play yet”.

The header

Every layout has the same row at the top:

• Section: the section playing, in its marker’s colour.
• Next Section: the one coming, within four bars, and how far (“→ Chorus in 3”).
• Bar Count: the bar and how many there are (“34 / 64”).
• Beat Dots: the beat, which also counts you in.
• Tempo: at the speed you’re playing.

Turn any of them off in Header. With all of them off, there’s no header row. On a phone, or in a pane too small for the whole row, the header shows only the section and the next one until you change Header yourself.

A section’s cue (“watch me”, “×4 then stop”) shows as a banner across the Stage the bar before the section and through its first bar. Write one from the marker’s menu, Add Cue… (Cues); Show Cues turns the banners off.

Layouts

Choose one in Layout:

• Lines: the bars a few to a line, the line playing lit with the bar playing marked and the chord sounding in the accent colour; the lines after it dimmer. Lyrics sit under their chords, the syllables lit as they’re sung.
• Notation: two slots, karaoke style. One holds the bars playing, the other what comes next, already readable; when the playhead moves into the second, the first fades and the bars after fade in there. It reads one part, large, until you choose another or All Parts (see the part); its chords, words and rehearsal marks are never smaller than 14 points. Show TAB adds a TAB staff under each fretted part.
• Chord Chart: the section playing as a chord chart, four bars a row, its repeats and endings written as the Chart writes them, the bar playing lit; the next section under it, dimmer. A loop shows ×∞, a playlist step its pass (“2/3”). Without chords, slashes for the beats.
• Big Chord: the chord sounding, huge, and the next one smaller with how many beats until it. Under it, how to play it: the chord’s own diagram, or a common guitar shape, or a keyboard with its notes lit.
• Lyrics: a teleprompter. The line being sung large, the syllable being sung in the accent colour, the next lines smaller, the sections as cue lines between them. With Show Chords, the chords sit small over their syllables.

Settings

The ⚙ holds the rest, saved with the pane and carried by workspaces:

• Bars a Line: One to Four, for Lines and for each Notation slot.
• Size: Small, Normal, Large or Huge, the type from three quarters to twice its size. In Notation, it sizes the header and the chords, words and rehearsal marks; the slots fit their bars in the room left.
• Stage Theme: Stage, light on dark for a dark room, or Daylight, dark on light.
• Show Chords, Guess Chords from the Notes, Show Lyrics, Show Cues and Show TAB.
• Preset, Part and Band: see Presets, parts and the band.

People who join a Play Together session can read the Stage on their own device, and a watch link shows it to an audience in a browser: see Watch links.