What Ferrous Lineup does

Ferrous Lineup is a backing band you can learn harmony with. You write the chords of a song bar by bar, pick a style, and a band plays them: a piano, a bass and drums, and in many styles a guitar, strings, an organ or a horn section too. Change the style, the key or the tempo, and the band plays the song again the new way. While it plays, the app names every chord you hear and says what it does in the key.

Ferrous Lineup is free software: you can use it, share it and change it under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows.

What you can do with it

• Play a song with a band. Type the chords on the chord sheet, choose one of the styles in the Library, and press Space. Give the song an intro and an ending, play the chorus twice, let the band dig in on the bridge, or stop on a shot with the band.
• Practise with it. Leave a player out and play the part yourself, loop the bars you are learning, start slow and let the speed trainer bring you up to tempo, and print a lead sheet for a B♭, E♭ or F instrument.
• Learn harmony. The harmony keys show the seven chords of the key, coloured by what they do. Every chord on the chord sheet has its Roman numeral under it, and chords from outside the key say where they come from. Part 5 of this manual is a short course in harmony with the app as your instrument.
• Edit every note. What the band plays lands on tracks of its own, as ordinary patterns. Open one in the piano roll to see how a bossa nova pianist spreads a chord, change it, or write your own parts from scratch.
• Listen and study. Hundreds of demo songs, from folk songs and tangos to jazz standards and Boléro, open with their chords written out, and the listening guide says what to listen for.
• Go beyond keys. Write with pitch-class sets, twelve-tone rows and Kröpfl’s micromodes, and see the same music named in each of them.
• Share it. Export the song as a WAV or MIDI file, as a video with the views playing along, or as a printable lead sheet. Connect a MIDI keyboard to play along, or an external synth to play the band.

How this manual is organized

1. Getting started: installing the app, the main window, your first song, and the instrument sounds.
2. Songs with the band: the chord sheet, the styles, song form, breaks, swing, the bigger band, the soloist and your own styles.
3. Editing notes: patterns and the playlist, the channel rack, the piano roll, the harmony keys, tempo and key changes, and the settings.
4. Sound, MIDI and files: the mixer, MIDI keyboards and synths, saving and opening, and exporting.
5. Learning harmony: notes and scales, keys and modes, chords and what they do, voice leading, rhythm and meter, sets and rows, and practising.
6. The demos: how to find them, and a guide to listening to them.

At the end are the keyboard shortcuts, troubleshooting, a music glossary and an index.

How the manual writes things

• Words in bold are written as the app shows them: a button, a menu item, a window.
• A path through the menus is written with >: File > Demos > Songs means the File menu, then Demos, then Songs.
• Ctrl is the Control key on Linux and Windows. On a Mac, use ⌘ (Command) wherever this manual says Ctrl.
• Notes are named with letters (C, D, E, F♯). The app can name them in solfège instead (Do, Re, Mi, Fa♯): see Settings.

The app is also in Spanish, and so is this manual: the manual de usuario. How the program is built, and why, is in a separate book, Inside Ferrous Lineup, written for people who want to read or change its code.