Holds notes for as long as you like, to tune against. Several at once make a chord. The metronome is there if you want it.
Scale
Plays a scale in the key, range and direction you choose.
Arpeggio
The same, from a chord.
Free
Notes you pick yourself, played in that order.
Metro
The metronome alone. More opens the rest of it.
Tuner
Listens instead of playing. Nothing else sounds while it is open.
Saved exercises
A drawer for each mode
What you save in a mode is what that mode shows, folders and all. Preparing a term of lessons fills this up, and the two scales you wrote in Free should not be at the bottom of everything you have ever saved. A rotation of scales and chords saved in Scale is a Scale exercise; Arpeggio does not show it.
Keeping a setup
Set the app up the way you want to practise, give it a name, and it is there next time you open it. A name is its own within one folder, and saving over one asks first — twice, or not at all.
Folders
＋ Folder makes one from the name in the field and steps into it. What you save from then on goes where you are standing, and the line under the list says so. A folder inside a folder is made the same way: go in, and make the next one there.
Getting about
Tap a folder to go in. The trail above the list — Exercises › Lessons › João — takes you back to any step of it. A folder says how much is under it, at any depth.
Moving one
The ⇢ picks an exercise up. Walk to the folder you want and tap Put it here. Two taps and no dragging, which is the only kind that works with a finger.
Deleting
✕ Select above the list opens the crosses, and while they are open a tap on one removes that row — so a delete is something you went there to do, not something a thumb can do in passing. It closes itself when you leave. A folder goes only when it is empty.
Tuner
What it reads
The note and how far off you are, in cents. Green means you are there.
The strobe
Still means in tune, and it drifts the way you are out.
Reference A4
Moves every note with it: 415 for baroque pitch, 442 or 443 where the orchestra sits high.
Temperament
Equal, just, Pythagorean, meantone or Werckmeister, measured from the key you name. Away from equal the reading moves: that is the temperament, not an error.
Clear this mode
Back to equal and 440 in two taps.
Notes
Root
The twelve notes are laid out starting from it, and it wears a badge of its own. Choosing another root empties what you had picked: it is a fresh start, not a transposition.
Picking them
Tap a note to put it in or take it out. Use as many as you like, from one to twelve — they do not have to make a scale, and there is nothing to say they should.
The octave of each one
A note that is in carries a + and a − of its own, and starts at octave 3 — one octave each. A low C and a high G in the same line is what they are for.
The order they play in
Lowest to highest, not the order you tapped them — the octave you give a note is what decides where it falls. If the root is one of them the line starts there and comes round: root G with C, E and G picked plays G, C, E, G.
Clear
Empties the picked notes and leaves the root where it is.
Scales and chords
The twelve notes
The key everything else is built from.
The family boxes
One opens at a time, and a closed one still says what is chosen inside it.
Single or Study list
Single works on one scale or chord; Study list takes several in turn, one per pass.
The study list
Scales chosen in Scale and chords chosen in Arpeggio join the same rotation. A tap adds, so the same thing can be in twice. In the list, ✕ takes one out and tapping one picks it up — tap where it should go.
Study list
Scales only keeps the rotation to the one you are in — scales in Scale, chords in Arpeggio. Group puts them in one rotation, which is what "the dorian, then a minor seventh on the same root" needs. Either way the run stays in the panel you started it from and takes everything from there — its tempo, its octaves, its cycle of fourths — and a chord in the list plays as an arpeggio without leaving Scale.
Each item, its own way
The mark before a name is that item's own direction; tap it to change it. A faint dot means it follows Direction like everything else.
Clear
Empties the selection.
Range & Direction
Octaves
How far the line reaches.
Start Octave
Where the line begins.
Direction
Up, down, or up and back down. Where something changes between passes, up and back means the passes take turns instead: this one up, the next one down.
Top note
In Free, whether the line takes its first note again an octave up before it turns back — C E G, or C E G C. A scale always takes its octave; a handful of notes you chose is not a scale.
Turning note
A line that goes up and back turns twice: at the top, and at the bottom where the next round begins. Twice sounds both of those notes again, so each turn gets a beat. The first note of all is single — nothing has turned yet — and a run that stops ends on one note.
Start On
Which degree of the scale the line starts from. On a chord it is the inversion.
Pattern
A shape walked from every degree instead of straight up: thirds plays 1–3, then 2–4, then 3–5, and 1 3 5 the arpeggio standing on each degree. Free is a shape of your own — tap the degrees in the order you want them. The line underneath spells out what it does in your key.
Practice Progressions
Root Movement
Stay in one key, or move up a fourth each time round — the cycle of fourths.
Through the modes
The seven modes of one scale, each from its own note and one octave each. It wants a single seven-note scale and no shape.
Up-Down means
Only with something in rotation. Alternate takes one item up and the next one down; Each both ways finishes an item — up and back down — before the rotation moves.
What a pass is
One round of the notes. The figure changes first, then the scale or chord, then the key.
Ear
The kinds
Four kinds of question, each with its own screen: intervals, scales, chords and rhythm. The name at the top takes you back to the list.
What is in play
Which ones can come up. Tap to add or take one away; the answers you are offered are exactly these, so a short list is an easier round.
Played
The two notes one after the other, upwards or downwards, or both together. Up or down keeps them apart and hides only which way they go; Mixed adds them sounding together.
From
One note always sets off from the note the app is on, which trains the interval against a key you know. Anywhere picks a starting note of its own — harder, and the more honest test.
The round
The button under the screen starts, plays it again while you think, and asks the next one once you have answered. The ♪ beside the score repeats it at any time, answer given or not. The count is this round's; leaving the mode starts a new one.
Metronome
Tempo
10 to 300 BPM. Type it, drag it, or tap it in.
Bar
How many beats it counts. Tap a circle to cycle it: accented, plain, silent.
Subdivision
What each beat is divided into. Swing splits it two to one. Sequence takes the figures you pick in turn, one per pass.
Click
Follow figure clicks every subdivision; Beats clicks the beats only.
Sound
Wood is the soft click and stays the one you start with. Digital is the same beat with a hard edge, for playing over something loud.
While it runs
Count In
Bars of click before the notes come in, ending on a downbeat. Count again on says when it comes back.
Advance Every
With the metronome alone, what counts as a pass: so many bars, or so many beats.
Tempo Change
The tempo moving on its own. Up and Down step it every round or every so many minutes; Ramp slides it to the tempo you name. Start always begins again from your own tempo.
Silences
The metronome drops out for a stretch of beats and comes back in time, so you keep it going yourself. Three levels, reached over the minutes you give it; Keep the one leaves beat one sounding. In Metro and Drone.
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm
Two pulses at once. The cycle shown is how long until they meet again.
Notes follow
Under a polyrhythm, which of the two layers the notes ride.
Accompaniment
Where the accompaniment lives
In Metro, and only there. In the other modes the metronome clicks and nothing more.
Accompaniment
A groove instead of the click: Rock, Pop, Funk, R&B, Bossa, Jazz Swing, or a Ballad on brushes. Each is a bar that repeats, with no fills — something to play over rather than to listen to. The count-in still clicks.
Kit
Recorded is a real kit, warm and big; Machine is dry and tight and cuts through a small speaker. Switch while it plays.
Density
How full a style plays. A pattern of your own is left exactly as you made it.
Mixer
A level for each drum. The faders a style does not use are faded out. Level again puts them all back.
Pattern
Writing it
Six voices down the side and the bar across — the bar you chose, so three beats gives you three to write in. Level says how hard a tap writes, and tapping the same cell again clears it.
Time
What you are writing on, sixteenths or triplets. Both can live in the same pattern, and one choice is also the one that sounds.
Loop
How many bars go round, up to four, with a tab for each. Clear bar empties the one you are on; Copy into this bar takes any other bar and puts it here.
Keeping one
Name it under My patterns and it is there next time. It plays under Accompaniment → Custom, and all of it can be written while it plays.
Phrasing
Note Length
A note on every subdivision, one a beat, or one a bar.
Phrase Alignment
Restart each round puts note one on beat one every time. Let it drift lets a phrase that does not fit the bar walk round against the pulse.
Timbre
Which to use
You tune by the beating between partials, so a voice with partials is worth more than a clean one. A sine is good for a unison or an octave and little else.
The ones that hold
Strings and Hammond hold a note, so they can be drones. The Hammond is the steadiest of them.
The ones that fade
Piano, Rhodes and Vibraphone fade, which is what makes the rhythm of a line easy to hear. They play the note sequences rather than drones.
Settings — the ⚙ in the corner
Note names
What the notes are called on screen, and nothing more — no pitch moves. A B C, Dó Ré Mi (fixed do) or the German Cis Des H. The spelling follows the key.
Theme
Dark or light.
Playing
Undo
The ↶ in the corner takes back the last thing you did, wherever you did it — a tempo, a note, a cell of a pattern, a deleted exercise. Press it again to keep going back, thirty steps deep. Opening a panel or pressing Start never costs a step. It stops the playing before it puts anything back, and it leaves the theme, the language and the note names alone.
Clear this mode
Puts that mode back to how the app opens. Every mode is separate, so clearing one leaves the others alone.
✕ Clear
The one at the foot of a panel puts back that panel alone and leaves everything else where it is. Two taps, like everything here that takes something away.
Start
Or the space bar, unless you are typing in a field.
Offline
Once opened, the app runs with no network at all. Add it to your home screen and it behaves as an app.
Settings
English is built in; the others are fetched once and then kept, so they work offline too.