2. The workspace

Settings

Settings decide how new songs and new panes start: the step length, the grid, the metronome’s sound, the Score’s font. Once a pane or a song has its own, set from its menus, that one wins and is saved with the song. Settings are kept on each device.

Settings

Available on every platform.

Settings has the same twelve sections, in the same order, on every device:

• Account: your name and colour (what the people you play and edit with see), and, signed in to Stab Cloud, your plan and storage, Join live editing automatically, Blocked People, News and updates, Download All and Delete Account…. Signed out, it offers to sign in, and the name you set here is offered to your account when you do.
• Purchases: your licence (or how many free songs are left), Enter Licence Key…your Stab Cloud plan, and your Stab Cloud plan.
• General: appearance, note names, how new songs start (the template, where they’re saved, page size, part names), the library’s folder, and Touch on a touch screen: what one finger does over empty space.
• Editing: hearing notes as you write, left-handed fretboards, where the Instrument’s controls go (Instrument controls, Instrument sides), how new panes start (step length, snapping and the grid, following the playhead, writing at the playhead while playing, bends and articulations shown), and reference recordings; the Assistant: showing it, Ask Before Changing the Song, Help improve the Assistant and Connect an AI app.
• Score: how a new Score pane starts (the theme, Paper at first; the music font; page view, on at first; the TAB staff), Export PDFs in the Score’s theme (off at first: PDFs are black on white), and how printed music is read (the page’s layout, unsure bars, repeats, and Show Reading Details).
• Playback: the metronome (its sound, clicks per beat, the accent, volume, Flash the beat around the pane) and the count-in.
• Audio & MIDI: Audio Buffer (below), your MIDI devices, outputs, recording (quantizing as you play) and where new takes are kept.
• Sounds: what the sounds take on this device, by kind, where they’re kept, checking for new sounds and updates, what new songs’ drums, guitar, bass and keys play, the sounds here by size with the songs that use them, and Credits and Licences. See The Sound Library.
• Plugins & FilesYour Files: your own impulse responses and SFZ instruments, third-party: Use plugins and your filesUse your files turns them all off or on, each format has its switch, the folders Stab looks in, and what couldn’t be read.in a browser, the files a song carries play; there are no folders of your own here.
• Play Together: Join from Anywhere, Let guests keep a copy (what your sessions start with: off), and Keep a session log, with its logsin a browser you join sessions; hosting is in the apps.
• Workspaces: the built-in workspaces to add or reset, and yours to remove.
• Privacy: crash reports and usage statistics (below), About Stab (the version, Contact, Bluesky, the Privacy Policy, the Terms of Use, acknowledgements), and Reset All Settings…, which asks first and puts every setting back as it was at first; your songs, your account and your purchases aren’t touched.

Note names

How Stab names notes: on the Instrument and its readout, the keyboards beside keys lanes, a tab track’s strings, the tuner, the note inspector, the Score’s note input, keys, the scale overlay’s root, the transpose card, the MIDI monitor and what a screen reader says.

• Automatic (the default) follows your browser’ssystem’s language: French gives French solfège; Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian give solfège; German, the Scandinavian languages, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, Polish and Hungarian give German names; any other language, Dutch included, gives English letters.
• English: C D E F G A B.
• German: C D E F G A H, with B for B♭. Sharps and flats keep their signs (C♯, E♭), not Cis and Es.
• French solfège: Do Ré Mi Fa Sol La Si.
• Solfège: Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si, as Italian, Spanish and Portuguese write them.

Sharps and flats are always ♯ and ♭ (Do♯, Si♭), and an octave number follows the name (Do4 is middle C).

Chord symbols keep their letters (Am7), as most charts write them even in French. Turn on Chord symbols in the same names to have them follow too: Lam7, Si♭/Ré, or H7 in German, in the chords row, the Chart, the Stage and the Score. You can type them that way as well. Songs always keep their chords in letters, so files you share or export read the same everywhere.

Crash reports and usage statistics

Available on every platform.

Stab sends nothing about how you use it unless you say so.

• Crash reports. After a crash, Stab asks at its next start whether to send the report. In Settings › Privacy you can answer once for all with Always Send or Never Send, or keep Ask Each Time. A report says what happened in Stab’s code: never your songs, nor who you are.
• Usage statistics are off until you turn them on. Once a day they send which features you used that day, the app’s version, and an id that changes every month. Show What’s Sent… shows exactly what would go today.
• News and updates. When you sign in to Stab Cloud, the form has an optional box, “Send me news and updates from Stab (no spam)”. While you’re signed in, Settings › Account has News and updates to turn it off or on: now and then an email about what’s new, each with a link to stop them.

Your age

Crash reports, usage statistics and a Stab Cloud account are for people 15 and over; everything else in Stab works at any age. Nothing asks your age: their own words say so (“Send crash reports only if you’re 15 or older”), and signing in to Stab Cloud asks you to tick “I’m 15 or older and I accept the Terms”.

If an older version of Stab was told on this device that you’re under 15, those three stay off: Settings › Privacy shows Age: Under 15, and Reset Age… forgets that answer.

Memory and the audio’s load

Available on every platform.