Basic Operation
Controlling Playback
Most playback functions can be controlled with both the mouse or keystrokes. See the Keyboard Shortcuts diagram under the Help menu – most people find keystrokes are easier and faster!
Play/Pause: the SPACE bar starts and stops playback, just like the Play/Pause button (triangle) in the upper left corner.
Return To Zero: the 0 (zero) key and/or the RTZ button both perform a “return-to-zero” (return to the beginning of the song).
Time Display: the upper section shows the current position in the song, expressed as hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds. The lower section shows musical time in bars and beats.
Speed and Pitch “LEDs”: when Speed or Pitch control is set to any non-zero value, this will be green. If you click on it when it’s green, it will temporarily disable the control without changing its value, and turn red. Clicking it again will re-enable the current value, and turn it green again. At all other times, it will be grey, meaning that the control is set to its default value (zero).
Finding specific points in a song
Double-clicking within the white space of any bar in a moving Chart (the scrolling whole-song display) will relocate to the start of that bar immediately, whether stopped or running.
The popup menu under the time display shows the names of location points (usually, song sections). Choose one to jump to that point, whether running or stopped. The first 18 locations points will also have keystroke equivalents – numerals 1-9, and SHIFT 1-9, as shown in the menu.
You can also just drag the slider under the time display to find any point in a song.
Switching between Speed, Pitch and Metronome tabs
Click any tab name to select it, or type ‘S‘ for the Speed tab, ‘M‘ for the Metronome tab, or ‘H‘ for the pitch tab (because ‘P’ is used by looping controls).
The speed slider changes playback speed without changing pitch. Use slow speeds to practice difficult parts! You can also change speed with the [ and ] keys, in 5% increments – try this, it’s really useful!
Looping
Most TuneLings will come with a set of musically useful loops already created, but you can create as many additional loops as you like, and store any of them for later use. Every loop needs a valid start time and end time. You can create the start/end times while playing or stopped.
To hear a loop: Turn Looping on/off by clicking the “On” or “Off” button, with any valid loop selected, or type the ‘O’ key.
To create a loop while playing a song:
Click the “Set” button for Start or use the “L” key to set the loop start time.
Click the “Set” button for End or use the “P” key to set the loop end time.
Looping does not need to be turned on to create the loop, but it can be, and will have immediate effect.
It is normal to hear a very brief audio glitch (dropout) when turning looping off during playback.
To save a loop: with a valid loop active, click “Save” and it will be added to the pull-down menu, below the “Save” and “Edit” buttons.
To edit loop names, click the “Edit” button. A list of loops will appear. Click any loop name to highlight and edit it.
Metronome
There’s rarely a need to change the metronome settings, because most TuneLings will come with them set correctly for most users’ needs.
Turn on “Metronome During Music” if you want to hear the click while the music is playing. You’ll rarely need to do this, because you’re already playing along “with the band”!
Turn on “Metronome During Pickup” if you want to hear clicks at the beginning of a song, when the song starts with an incomplete bar (a “pickup”). TuneLings for such songs will typically come with this already turned on, and there’s almost no reason to ever turn it off.
Count-offs are almost always useful – they get you ready to play at the beginning of a song. You can have a one or two bar count-off.
The Last Count-off Beat lets you select the last click to be heard for either a pickup or cutoff, or combination of the two – in case you don’t want to hear all of the clicks.
More helpful information…
Our online Help information (everything under the Help menu of the TuneLings Cloud), will probably be adequate for most users’ needs. However, we do have training videos made for an earlier (Alpha) release of the TuneLings application. These are more detailed, though not completely current. If you’d like to see them, there are YouTube playlists for them at www.tunelings.com (look for the Help menu, top of the page).
Example of easy, musical looping: Let’s say you want to loop bars 5-8 of a song. Here’s how to do it fast:
Set the loop quantize resolution to Bars (this is the default). This means your loops will be made of whole bars, not fragments of them.
Play audio from any point before bar 5.
At any time during bar 5, press the L key to mark the start of the loop.
At any time during bar 8, press the P key to mark the end of the loop.
You should see loop start and end times displayed (and the Loop Ready message), and the bars of the loop will be tinted in the chart.
Turn on looping if it isn’t already on. You can use Looping On/Off control buttons, or the letter O key (not the zero key!).