Practising

A band that plays your chords is most useful when you play along. The chord sheet’s practice row has what a musician reaches for when practising with a recording: a count-in, a metronome, a slower speed, tap tempo, looping the bars you are working on, a speed trainer, and taking a part away from the band to play it yourself. The ear training window then trains you to hear harmony without looking.

Count-in and metronome

• Count-in: when you press Play, one bar of clicks comes first, and the music starts on the next “one”. Start in the middle of a bar and the count runs on to where you start, so the beat never jumps.
• Metronome: a click on every beat while the music plays. The first beat of each bar is higher, so you always know where “one” is.

The metronome clicks the beats you feel, not every note of the time signature: twice a bar in 6/8, three times in 2+2+3/8 (see Rhythm and meter). Both are in the toolbar too, so they work with any song or pattern, and both are remembered for next time.

Speed and tap tempo

Speed plays the band slower or faster than the song, from 25% to 200%. The song keeps its own tempo: the TEMPO box still shows it, with the speed over it, as in “TEMPO 70%”, and a saved song or an exported WAV is at full speed. The speed goes back to 100% each time the app starts, so a song is never slow by surprise.

Tap sets the song’s tempo to yours: click it on the beat a few times, in time with a recording or with the tempo in your head.

Looping bars

Click a bar, Shift+click another (or hold Shift and press an arrow key), and click Loop bars 3–4: those bars play over and over. They are shaded on the sheet, and the playlist’s toolbar says Looping bars 3–4. Stop looping plays the whole song again from where you are.

The speed trainer

A passage you can’t play at full speed is learned the same way on every instrument: slowly until it’s right, then a little faster, and again. The Speed trainer does it for you. Click it, and four boxes appear beside it:

• from: the speed Play starts at;
• to: the speed to get to. 100% is the song’s tempo; 110% goes past it, to have some room to spare;
• by: how much faster each new speed is;
• every: how many times round at each speed before the next one. With every 2 passes you play each speed twice: once to get it, once to check you have it.

Press Play, and each time the loop comes round the band plays a little faster, until it reaches the speed you are aiming for and stays there. The loop is whatever playback goes round: the bars you loop, the whole song when nothing is looped, or the pattern in pattern mode. Stop (⏹) sets the speed back to where it started, ready for the next run; Pause (❚❚) keeps it, so Play carries on at the speed you got to. Clicking Speed trainer again turns it off and leaves the speed where it got to.

The trainer’s numbers are remembered, and Edit > Settings… > Playback has them too, next to the count-in, the metronome and the practice speed.

Playing a part yourself

You play, in the same row, takes one player away from the band so you can play that part, with your keyboard switched to that player’s sound. See Locking a track, and playing your part.

Ear training (experimental)

Musicians need to hear harmony too: to tell a minor third from a major one, or the V of a song from its IV, without looking. View > Ear training opens a window that plays something and asks you to name it, and tells you at once whether you were right, and why:

It has three tabs:

• Intervals: two notes play, and you name the interval. Choose which intervals can come up and how they are Played: Up, Down or Together. Start with a few that sound very different, such as a third, a fifth and the octave, and add the others one at a time.
• Chords: a chord plays, and you name its kind: major, minor, diminished, augmented, or one of the seventh chords. With Inversions, its lowest note is not always the root; Note by note plays it one note at a time from the bass up.
• Progressions: the band plays a few chords in a key, one bar each, and you name them by their numerals on a row of harmony keys with the names hidden. The first chord is always I, so you know where you start, and Hear the key plays a cadence that says where home is. Choose the Keys, the chords that can come up, Sevenths, the Players, the Length and the Tempo.

After you answer, the right answer turns green, a wrong one red, and a box explains it: the notes, the full name, how many semitones and, for an interval going up, a tune that starts with it. Click any answer button to hear it next to the right one. ▶ Play again repeats the question as often as you like, and Next ▸ asks another (before you answer it is Skip ▸, and a skipped question doesn’t count). The line at the bottom keeps the score, for each tab; Start again sets it back to zero.

The window changes nothing in the song, and the song pauses while a question plays.