Repository Guide

Navigating Folders

A folder row ends with a right arrow (›): click it to go into the folder, and the list shows what it holds. A score row ends with a down arrow (⌄) and opens in place, below its title; opening another score closes the one that was open. Inside a folder, the path above the list shows where you are (My repertoire › Reels › …): click any folder in it to go straight back there. The "Back to …" row below it goes up one level, and so does your browser's Back button. The address names the folder you are in, so a reload, or a return from another page, brings you back to it.

Finding a score by name

The search box at the top of the repository looks through every score in your whole repertoire, not just the folder on screen — which is the point, since the folder a tune is filed in is usually the thing you have forgotten. Type any part of a title; case and accents are ignored, so "eire" finds "Éirinn". Each result shows the folder path it lives in, and clicking it takes you straight there, with the score open on its page. Clear the box to go back to browsing.

Score Summary PDF

The summary button on a folder row generates a PDF booklet: for every tune in the folder (including sub-folders) it prints a single staff line showing the opening and closing measures side by side. Use this to create a compact setlist or tune preview sheet.

Printing a Folder

The print button next to it prints full scores rather than a preview: it lists every tune in the folder and its sub-folders, all selected by default, so you can untick the ones you don't want and give the sheet a title. Short tunes share a page automatically. To print just one tune, open it and use the print button in the score toolbar instead — no list is shown there, since opening a tune already selects it.

Shared Folders

A folder marked as shared (shown with a secondary-colour badge) is visible to other users of the same share group. Shared folders appear in the repository of every member of the group. Admins manage sharing with the Share button on the folder's row, in Edit mode.

View / Edit mode

The View / Edit toggle at the top of the page controls whether creation, move, share, export, and delete controls are shown on each row. Any non-read-only account — free, subscribed, or admin — can switch to Edit mode to manage their own content; it is not an admin-only privilege, just a way to hide clutter while browsing.

Creating Folders and Scores (Edit mode)

In Edit mode, each row shows its buttons at the end of the row. The + button adds a new sub-folder or a new score directly inside the folder you are in. Type the name and press Enter; tick "Folder (instead of a score)" for a folder. A new score opens on a short starting template (X:, T: with its name, M:, L: and K: last), so you can type the music straight after the key.

Moving Items (Edit mode)

In Edit mode, the Move button on a file or folder row (a folder with an arrow) lets you pick a destination folder. You can also drag an item by the grip at the start of its controls and drop it on a folder in the list, or on the back row to move it up one level. The item and all its contents are moved immediately. This is a server-side operation and cannot be undone from the UI.

Back up, export and restore

In View mode, the Back up button at the top of the repository downloads your whole repertoire as one file, whichever folder you are in — do this regularly, and keep the file somewhere other than this device. The export button on any file or folder downloads a portable snapshot of that item and everything inside it — ABC source, comments, tags, and the attachments themselves, not just links to them — so the file is self-contained and can be carried to another device, another account, or another server. It works the same on a free account, where the export is built in the browser. In Edit mode, the Back up button becomes Restore, which reads a backup or an exported item back into the current folder, and also accepts a full account backup archive. Importing merges rather than overwrites: a folder whose name is already taken arrives beside the existing one as "Name (2)", so nothing you already have is replaced.

Restore from backup (free accounts)

Free accounts keep their data in this browser's local storage and get an automatic rolling set of local backup snapshots. In Edit mode, use the Restore from backup button in the toolbar to pick one and roll your whole repository back to it — this replaces everything currently there and cannot be undone.

Version history (subscribers)

Subscriber accounts can switch on Historical mode (the Real time / Historical toggle in the toolbar) to show a History button on every tune, folder, and media attachment, opening its full version timeline — browse, compare, restore, name, and annotate past versions. See the Score Versioning Guide for details.

Pin for offline (subscribers)

Subscriber accounts keep their repertoire on the server, so a tune is normally fetched when you open it. Pin one — or a whole folder, with a checkbox deciding whether sub-folders come too — and its notation and attachments are downloaded and kept on this device, readable with no network at all. A folder pin tells you how much it is about to download before it starts. Pinned content is read-only offline and does not refresh by itself: unpin and pin again to pull the current version down.

Preview your public profile (subscribers)

Subscriber accounts see their own name at the top of the page as a clickable button instead of plain text. Click it to preview how your public musician profile looks — set it up and choose what is visible on the Musician page, reached from your avatar in the header.

Opening a Score

Click anywhere on a score row to expand it and display the rendered sheet music. Click again to collapse. Files are loaded from the server on first open — a spinner appears briefly while the content arrives.

The three sections

An opened score is split into three collapsible sections, each with its own bar you click to fold or unfold. ABC notation is the rendered sheet music together with the playback and practice tools. Score attachments holds images and PDF files of the tune. Audio & video holds the recordings and links you have saved. The bars of Score attachments and Audio & video show how many items each holds and their names. A section whose bar is greyed out simply has nothing in it yet. Edit mode keeps the same sections, open or folded as you left them, and adds what editing needs inside them: the ABC editor under the score, and an Add row in each attachments section. Your notes about the tune are annotations, drawn on the score itself.

Annotations

Annotations are your notes drawn on the score: on the ABC notation, and on each attached PDF page or image. A contextual annotation sits next to the note or the spot you clicked, a header annotation above the music (the history or the source of the tune), a footer annotation below it as a numbered footnote. To add one, switch the Read / Annotate toggle above the score to Annotate and click: on the music for a contextual note, above it for a header, below it for a footer; the editor lets you change the kind before you insert. Click an annotation in Annotate mode to edit or delete it. Text is Markdown. Each tune of a multi-tune file and each PDF page has its own annotations. They are saved with the file, so they travel with backups and exports, and they are shown in View and Edit mode alike. Their font, colours and size are in Configuration, Annotation options. Notes written before annotations existed appear as a header on the first tune. Shared and offline copies show annotations but cannot change them.

Ornaments for your instrument

A tune can carry an ornamented version for flute and whistle, fiddle or concertina without its notation being changed. To write one, switch the Read / Annotate / Ornament toggle above the score to Ornament, pick the instrument and an ornament (cut, tap, roll, cran, slide or trill, depending on the instrument), then click a note; click it again to remove the ornament. The ornaments appear on the score as you add them. Once a tune has ornaments, a version selector next to the toggle switches between the original and each instrument's version: the score, the playback, the cursor and the learning mode all follow the version shown, and annotations stay on their notes. The choice is remembered while the page stays open. If a note is later edited or deleted, its ornament is listed under the palette as changed and is no longer played; remove it there. Shared and offline copies can show and play every version but cannot change it. The print button offers the original or a version with ornaments, and a folder print can use each tune's ornaments for one instrument.

Multi-Tune Files

An ABC file can contain several tunes (each starting with X:). When more than one tune is present, a selector appears above the score so you can switch between them. The selected tune index is remembered per file.

Pages for a tune

A tune can point at the page of a PDF tune book, a photo or a web page. The links of the tune you are reading show as chips under the score toolbar and at the top of Audio & video. A PDF or photo chip opens the page beside the score, or beside the video or recording so you can read while it plays; on a narrow screen a Score | Page or Video | Page switch changes what you see, and the player keeps playing. To link a page, in View or Edit mode: when the tune has no page yet, + Link a page opens the score's first PDF or photo beside it (its name at the top of the page switches to another file); turn to the tune's page and tick “Page N goes with” the tune. Tunes on page N, at the top of the page and above every PDF or photo in Score attachments, names the tunes the page belongs to now; tick or untick a tune and it is saved at once, so moving a page to another tune is an untick and a tick. Read-only band and course accounts see the links but cannot change them. A web link is added under the score toolbar in Edit mode. Escape or the close button puts the page away. A link whose file was deleted shows a dashed warning; in Edit mode you can point it at another file or remove it. Replacing a PDF asks whether its links stay on the new file.

Playback

The player strip sits under the score's title and stays in sight while the score scrolls: Play (Pause while playing), Stop, Loop, the tempo, Metronome, Backing, Sound and the progress bar. Press Play to hear the tune; Loop starts it again at the end. Backing is on by default and plays (percussion, guitar, bass) when the score has chords. A score without chords plays its melody at once, and a note under the strip offers Add the suggested chords or Paste a chord chart; Not now hides it until you open the score again. The same two buttons stay in the Backing menu (the arrow beside Backing), with the style, the instruments and their volumes. Sound holds the instrument, the volume and Play melody. On a phone the strip is a bar at the foot of the screen, always in reach: Play, Stop, Loop and the tempo, with the progress as a thin line along its top edge that you can tap to jump. ··· opens Metronome, Backing and Sound from the bottom. The bar steps aside while you type in the editor or a text field.

Tempo

The − and + buttons beside the tempo on the player strip change the speed by 5 at a time. In View mode this only changes how the tune plays; the score's own tempo is changed in Edit mode. Click the tempo itself for the slider and five preset buttons that jump to standard speeds: Very Slow, Slow, Practice, Near, and Session. The presets adapt to the tune type — a jig uses dotted-quarter beats while a reel uses quarter beats. Count-in, in the same menu, counts one or two bars before Play starts the tune (Off, 1 bar, 2 bars; one bar to begin with): two beats a bar in a jig, three in a waltz, four in a reel. It is not counted again when you resume after a pause or when a loop comes round.

Finding a recording

The Audio & video section can search YouTube for you without leaving the score — it seeds the search from the tune's title and rhythm, so most of the time the first results are already the tune you are looking at. Save one and it is attached to the score for good; there is no need to switch into Edit mode to keep it. You can also attach a recording of your own, and each take you upload is kept rather than replacing the last one.

Turning a recording into a score

Every audio attachment carries a Transcribe to ABC button in its player bar. It listens to the recording and writes out the notes it hears as ABC, shown as a rendered score with its ABC source underneath and placed on your clipboard so you can paste it straight into a new tune. The result is a starting point rather than a finished transcription. It follows a single instrument playing one note at a time, so a solo whistle, flute or fiddle comes out far closer to the truth than a band, a guitar chord or a noisy recording made in a session. A Local account gets three transcriptions in total; a Cloud account has no limit.

Reading a PDF attachment

A PDF in Score attachments opens in a reader with page controls and a search box — useful when the attachment is a whole tunebook rather than a single tune. Searching shows you every hit rather than jumping blindly to the first, and the page controls stay reachable whether or not you are in fullscreen.

Printing

The print button in the toolbar sends the tune you are currently viewing straight to the browser print dialog as a PDF — no tune picker, since opening a tune already selects it. Multi-page scores are split across pages automatically, and displayed tablature is printed too. To print several tunes at once, use the print button on a folder row instead: it lists every tune in that folder so you can choose which ones go on the sheet. When a tune has ornaments, the button first asks whether to print the original or a version with ornaments; the folder print has the same choice, the original unless you pick an instrument.

Each voice plays its instrument

Open Voices in the score toolbar to give a voice its instrument; a tune of one voice has the same picker. The choice is written into the score, and the voice then plays with that instrument's sound, at once even while the tune is playing. A voice whose tablature line names another instrument plays that one. With Cloud, the mandolin, tenor banjo, guitar (steel-string), mandola and Irish bouzouki play the instruments recorded on real instruments; Local Free plays the standard sound of each. A voice with no instrument, or one with no sound of its own (concertina, accordions, ukulele, plectrum banjo, recorder, saxophone), keeps the instrument chosen in the player and in Configuration. A bass voice plays the same bass as the backing. The player's Instrument setting shows what the voices play: that instrument when they all play the same one, By voice when they differ; muted voices do not count. Choosing there sets only the voices without an instrument.

Tablature

A voice whose instrument has a tablature (fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar, melodeon, concertina…) can show it under its staff. Open Voices in the score toolbar: each such voice has a Tablature switch, with its tuning and capo, and a Staff switch. A melodeon voice also has its keyboard (G/C or B/C), written into the score, and its notation, Corgeron or CADB, which is yours: it stays on this device, the score is printed and exported in it, and Configuration → Tablature options sets the one every melodeon tab starts in. Choosing another keyboard keeps the buttons you picked when the new keyboard has them; any other note is placed by the app again. A whistle or flute voice has its key (D, or a G, C, B flat whistle…), written into the score: its holes chart moves with it, and the fingerings you chose are worked out again. Untick Staff to read that voice from its tab alone: its staff disappears, the other voices stay, and the tab shows the chord names over it and the rhythm as stems under it (beamed by beat). A voice keeps its staff or its tab, never neither. The choices are remembered per score on this device. Where the chord names and stems go, above or below the tab, is set once in Configuration → Tablature options.

Watch the notes on the instrument

When a voice shows its tablature, a Show the instrument button appears beside the Voices control: a mandolin, fiddle, banjo, guitar or other fretted voice, a melodeon or concertina, a whistle or flute. Switch it on and the instrument opens under the score: its neck, its keyboard, or its holes with the ladder of fingerings. Play the tune and each note lights where it is played, the place the tablature shows, with the last two fading behind it so you can follow the hand at full speed; a whistle's holes are covered as each note is fingered. Chords light every string they use, and a rest puts the light out. With several tab voices, buttons above the instrument choose the one to follow. The instrument only shows; to change a position, use Tab in Edit mode. Local Free shows a plain diagram, Cloud the drawn instrument. The choice is kept on this device for every tune, and the Learn panel has the same switch.

ABC Source Editor

In Edit mode the ABC source editor is already open, directly beneath the score; Close editor in the toolbar folds it away and Edit ABC brings it back, and the score remembers which you chose. Edit the notation and the score re-renders as you type; clicking a note in the score jumps to its position in the source. Your work is saved automatically as you go, so nothing is lost if you navigate away. For subscribers, one editing session publishes one version in the score's history — the automatic saves in between publish nothing, so the history stays readable.

ABC notation reference

Annotations

The notes that used to live in the Infos tab are now annotations, drawn on the score. In the ABC notation section and on each attached score, switch Read / Annotate to Annotate and click: on the music for a contextual note, above it for a header, below it for a footer. Click an existing annotation to edit or delete it. While Annotate is on, a click never selects a note or moves the ABC editor. An Infos note written before annotations is shown as a header on the first tune and keeps its text. The third choice, Ornament, adds an instrument's ornaments to a note without changing the ABC source; see Ornaments for your instrument in the score help.

Header Fields

Every tune starts with a block of one-letter header fields, each on its own line. The essentials: X: a tune number (required, must be unique within the file), T: the title, M: the meter (e.g. 4/4, 6/8), L: the default note length (e.g. 1/8), K: the key (e.g. Dmaj, Gmix, Ador) — always the last header line, since everything after it is the tune itself. R: names the rhythm (reel, jig, waltz…) and also steers chord and harmonic-style suggestions elsewhere in this editor. Other common fields: C: composer, Q: tempo, O: origin.

Decorations, Repeats & Bar Lines

Decorations are written inside single exclamation marks right before the note they apply to, e.g. !fermata! !trill! !p! !f! !accent!. A tilde ~ before a note requests a roll (an idiomatic ornament in Irish trad). Grace notes go in curly braces before the main note, e.g. {A}B. Repeat a section with |: at the start and :| at the end; first/second endings use [1 … [2 right after a repeat mark. A double bar || simply marks a section break with no repeat.

Multi-Tune Files

When a file contains several tunes (each starting with X:), a tune selector appears at the top of the panel. Select a tune to display and edit it. Each tune has its own chord grid and playback state. Adding a new tune to the ABC source and saving makes it available in the selector automatically.

Zoom & Fullscreen

Use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons to scale the score notation up or down for easier reading or editing. The Fullscreen button expands the editor to fill the entire browser window — press it again or press Escape to exit.

Print & Export

The print button sends the tune currently displayed straight to the browser print dialog as a PDF — multi-page scores are split automatically. In a file holding several tunes, it prints the one selected in the tune list, not all of them. The export button opens a menu of two formats, both converted in the browser: MusicXML (.musicxml), which Sibelius, Finale, Dorico, MuseScore and most other notation software open directly, with the notes, chord symbols, repeats and endings, ornaments and lyrics; and MuseScore (.mscz), ready to open in MuseScore. In a file of several tunes, both export the one selected in the tune list.

Transpose

Use the Transpose buttons (+ and −) to shift the key of the tune up or down by semitones; the panel shows how far you are from the key as written. In Edit mode transposing changes the tune itself: the K: header and all accidentals are rewritten in the ABC source and saved, and a short message says so. In View mode, and always for a band or course login, it only changes what you see and hear — the saved tune stays as it is, and "Back to the original" returns to it. To keep both versions, "Add as a new tune" puts the original back and adds the tune in its new key at the end of the score, titled "(in F# Dorian)" for example; the tune list switches between them. On a Cloud score the first transposition in Edit mode also saves a version in History, so the original can be found again after a reload; a Local score has no history, so use "Add as a new tune" before leaving it. Transposing also updates the chord grid to the new key.

Chord Suggestions & Chord Grid

Click a note in the score to select it, then use the chord suggestion button to see chord options for that beat. The selected chord is inserted into the chord grid at the correct bar and beat. Toggle the chord grid (strum score) with the grid button to see and edit all chords across the tune. Its two buttons write the grid's chords into the ABC source or remove every chord from it again. A chord holds until the next one, as on a chord chart: a bar with no chord shows and plays the last chord written before it, and only the bars before the first chord show the suggested ones. Its picker still offers the suggestions, and Add chords writes the suggestions into bars without a chord, never the held chord. A band or course login, which cannot save the score, is not offered the buttons that write chords into it. Use Undo to remove the last inserted chord.

Harmonic Style

The harmonic style selector controls which chord families are weighted when generating suggestions. Auto detects the style from the key and rhythm. Other options include Folk, Jazz, Classical, and modal styles (Dorian, Mixolydian…). The detected style and confidence level are shown next to the selector.

Paste a Chord Chart

Have the chords from a friend, a tune book or a website? Under the chord grid, Paste a chord chart takes them as text: bars split by | (G | Em-C | D), two chords in a bar by a space or a dash, / or . to hold a chord for a beat (G / D /), % to repeat the bar before, |: :| or x2 for repeats, one line per part or lines labelled A: and B:. The chords land on the bars of the selected tune: the chart is read once per part, the pickup gets no chord and both endings take the same chords. Two chords in a bar go on its first and middle beat (beats 1 and 3 in 4/4, the first and fourth eighth in 6/8). Anything that is not a chord is listed, never dropped silently. When the chart and the tune do not have the same number of bars, the dialog says so and asks how to lay the chart: bar by bar, following the repeats, each line twice, or part by part. A preview shows the chords on the bars and on the score before anything is written. Chords already in the score are kept unless you choose to replace them, and Undo in the toolbar takes the whole chart back out. The same button is offered under the player when a score without chords is played, and in the Backing menu; a band or course login does not see it.

Tablature

A voice whose instrument has a tablature (fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar, melodeon, concertina…) can show it under its staff. Open Voices in the score toolbar: each such voice has a Tablature switch, with its tuning and capo, and a Staff switch. A melodeon voice also has its keyboard (G/C or B/C), written into the score, and its notation, Corgeron or CADB, which is yours: it stays on this device, the score is printed and exported in it, and Configuration → Tablature options sets the one every melodeon tab starts in. Choosing another keyboard keeps the buttons you picked when the new keyboard has them; any other note is placed by the app again. A whistle or flute voice has its key (D, or a G, C, B flat whistle…), written into the score: its holes chart moves with it, and the fingerings you chose are worked out again. Untick Staff to read that voice from its tab alone: its staff disappears, the other voices stay, and the tab shows the chord names over it and the rhythm as stems under it (beamed by beat). A voice keeps its staff or its tab, never neither. The choices are remembered per score on this device. Where the chord names and stems go, above or below the tab, is set once in Configuration → Tablature options.

Edit the tablature on the neck (Edit mode)

When a tune shows a tablature, Edit mode adds Tab next to Read, Annotate and Ornament. Choose it and a neck of the tab's instrument opens under the score. Click a fret number in the tab to select that note (on a phone, a tap anywhere in its column, above or below the number, selects it too), then tap the neck: with Change chosen, the note moves to the string and fret you tapped, and the ABC changes with it. To write new notes, choose Insert before or Insert after: each tap adds a note at the length set in Note value (whole to sixteenth, dotted or not; the - and + keys halve and double it, the full stop adds or removes the dot). The new note is selected, so with Insert after you can keep tapping to write a run. On a keyboard, the letters A to G write that note instead of a tap, with the sharps or flats of the key signature, in the octave nearest the note before it; the ' and , keys then move the selected note up or down an octave. Hold a note on the score for half a second to lengthen it one step. Beside the note value, a counter shows how full the selected note's bar is, for example 5 of 6 eighths, green when the bar is full, amber when it is short or too long, and a first bar shorter than the others reads as a pickup. Rest writes a rest at the note value in an Insert mode, and with Change makes the selected note a rest of the same length; click a rest in the score and tap the neck to put a note in its place. Tie ties the selected note to the next note at the same pitch, or unties it. On a fretted instrument, Hammer-on, Pull-off and Slide join the selected note to the next one (the h, p and s keys do the same): the tab and the score draw an arc with its letter over the two notes, and playback sounds the second note without picking it, softer and joined to the first, a slide gliding up or down to it. A hammer-on goes up to a higher note and a pull-off down to a lower one. Choose the same button again to take it off. Notes inside a triplet can be changed and removed like any other, the triplet keeping count of its notes; a new note cannot go between two of its notes. With several tabs shown, the voice buttons above the instrument choose the voice you write into, so a part added with Add a voice can be filled: click one of its rests, or start it with Insert before. A melodeon, concertina, whistle or flute voice is edited the same way, on its own instrument: its keyboard or its holes open under the score in place of the neck, each button labelled as its tab writes it (an Anglo's 8 or 2a, a melodeon's row numbers). Tap a button to move the note there: the Push / Pull switch sets the bellows a tap writes, and a ringed button plays the same note, on the bellows it needs. A whistle or flute shows a ladder of every fingering, the cross-fingered and half-holed C naturals side by side; tap one to play the note that way. Shift+X moves to the next way. Beside a melodeon or concertina keyboard, a hand sets the selected note's finger: the suggested one is ringed, a tap on a finger writes it in the tab, and a tap on the same finger takes it off. Previous and Next above the instrument select the note before or after, so every note of a bar can be reached without tapping the score, and the instrument scrolls to keep the selected note's place in view. More keys work on the selected note: r makes a rest, t ties, u gives the note back to the automatic choice (Unpin), h, p and s write a hammer-on, pull-off or slide, o turns Overwrite on or off, so that the letters A to G replace the selected note and move on to the next, and Enter ends the bar after the note. In a song, the words (w: lines) stay on their notes: a new note gets no syllable, and a deleted note takes its syllable with it. Delete, or the Delete key, removes the selected note or rest, and Undo takes back any of these edits. Stop playback before editing.

The drawn instrument (Cloud)

Every plan edits on the same instrument, with the same strings, frets, buttons, holes and taps. Local Free shows it as a plain diagram, with position lines and first-position finger dots on the fiddle. With Cloud, the mandolin, fiddle, tenor and five-string banjos, guitar, Anglo concertina, G/C melodeon, whistle and flute are drawn like the real instrument, the labels and targets the same as on the plain one. A small switch above the neck sets the fiddle's position marks (finger tapes, hairlines, or a bare board that lights up under the pointer) and the guitar's look (steel-string or classical). Cloud also plays the instruments recorded on real instruments: the mandolin, tenor banjo, steel-string and nylon-string guitars, mandola and Irish bouzouki today.

The player

The player strip sits under the score's title as soon as the score opens, in Edit mode too: Play, Stop, Loop, the tempo with − and +, Metronome, Backing and Sound, then the progress bar. Click the progress bar, or use the arrow keys on it, to jump in the tune. The arrows beside the tempo, Backing and Sound open their settings.

Import a MusicXML or MuseScore file (Edit mode)

In Edit mode the import button in the score toolbar reads a notation file and turns it into ABC in the browser, nothing is uploaded. It accepts MusicXML (.xml, .musicxml, and the compressed .mxl) as exported by MuseScore, Finale, Sibelius, Dorico or a scanning tool, and MuseScore's own files (.mscx, .mscz). The converted tune is added after the tunes already in the score you have open, as a new entry in the tune list, so nothing you had is replaced; import into an empty score to start a fresh one. The score's title, comments and attachments are untouched. Long lines are wrapped to the number of bars per line set in Configuration. A file the converter cannot read leaves the score untouched and shows why under the button. Tunes found through the web search panel arrive the same way, as ABC that replaces the current source.

Transcribe a printed score into ABC (Edit mode)

In Edit mode the Score attachments section of a tune takes a printed score: pick or drop a PDF or a picture (PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP) and it is attached to the tune as before. Tick Transcribe into ABC to have it read as well: the file is attached first, so it stays with the tune whatever happens to the reading, then every page of the PDF is read in turn and joined into one score. A clean scan at about 300 dpi reads best, a skewed phone photo much less well. Your browser reads the pages itself: the first reading downloads about 100 MB of reading models, kept by the browser afterwards. With WebGPU a page takes a few seconds; without it, about half a minute to a minute, and the dialog says so. You can cancel at any time. Check the preview, then Use this score adds each tune after the ones already in the score, as the MusicXML import does, and opens the ABC notation section to show them, with the page that was read beside the ABC editor. Chord symbols and titles printed on the page are picked up when the PDF carries them as text. A transcription is a starting point: play it through and correct it before relying on it. A page of tablature with no staff (banjo, mandolin, guitar) becomes a score with its tab. A tab only gives frets, so when the page does not print the instrument, the tuning, the time signature or the note lengths, the dialog asks you for them, offering the likely choices, and never guesses. When a bar does not add up to the time signature, the dialog shows that bar note by note with each length as read and lets you change a length, saying live how much the bar now holds; Continue waits until every bar fits.

The printed page beside the ABC (Edit mode)

To check a transcription, or to type a tune from a printed page, open the page beside the ABC: in Edit mode each PDF or picture in Score attachments has an Open beside the ABC button, and the page you just transcribed opens that way by itself after Use this score. On a wide screen (1280 pixels or more) the page is on the left and the ABC editor on the right, with the score drawn below them, so you can read a bar and correct it without scrolling. On a narrower screen a Page / ABC switch shows one or the other in the same place, and each keeps where you had scrolled to. The cross above the page closes it. Recordings stay in their own section. When the ABC is right, The ABC is right: delete the PDF under the page removes that attachment after asking once; the ABC is not touched. A deleted attachment cannot be brought back, not even from History, so only use it once you no longer need the page. The other attachments, and the delete button of each one in Score attachments, are unchanged.

Warnings and Try to fix

When the notation cannot be read cleanly, a warning appears above the score saying at which line and column the problem is. Three common ones have a Try to fix button beside them, which rewrites the source for you and saves it: a tune copied from an online collection where a stray "!" is really a line break — left alone, whole bars silently disappear from the rendered score; a mid-tune change of time signature or key written without its square brackets, as "|M:4/4" instead of "|[M:4/4]", which reads as a row of puzzling "unknown character" warnings while the change itself is quietly dropped and the rest of the tune stays in the wrong metre; and a header that heads no music, which happens when a tune is pasted below a header that was already there and leaves the score showing an empty tune. If the button does not recognise the problem it changes nothing. When it does change something it does not always guess right, so look at the score afterwards: Ctrl+Z (⌘Z) in the editor undoes the change.

Bars that do not add up

When a bar holds more or less music than its time signature allows, its bar lines and everything between them turn amber on the score, and a line above it says which bar it is and by how much it is out, counted in the beat of the time signature, for example "Bar 12: 5 eighths of 6, 1 eighth missing". Bars are counted the way musicians count them: a pickup at the start is bar 0. That pickup and the incomplete bars on either side of a repeat, a double bar line or an ending are normal and are not reported. In Edit mode a short bar has a Fill with a rest button that adds the missing rest just before its bar line and saves the score, and Fill all does every short bar at once. Check the result: a rest completes the count, but the note you forgot to type is still missing. A bar that is too long has no automatic fix, because only you know which note is extra.

Composer

The Composer writes a brand-new tune for you, in a tradition, dance form and key you choose, and adds it to the current score as an extra tune without replacing anything. You are shown the tune as notation and can listen to it before deciding, so a generation you do not like costs you nothing. Open it from the Compose button in the score toolbar; the full guide is behind the ? inside that panel.

What is the Learning Machine?

The Learning Machine guides you through a structured practice workflow for any ABC tune. It focuses on two main stages — Listen and Phrase — plus an optional Ornamentation stage for Irish tunes.

Stage 1 — Listen

In the Listen stage, the tune plays at your chosen tempo so you can absorb the melody before attempting to play it. You can also enable the backing here to practise with accompaniment while keeping the full tune flow. The tempo stays on the player strip while you learn: − and + change it, and clicking it opens the slider (40–120 % of the original BPM), the presets and the tempo progression, to slow the tune down for careful listening.

Stage 2 — Phrase

In the Phrase stage the score is split into named phrases (A1, A2, B1 …) of two or three bars, following the parts of the tune: a phrase always stops at a repeat bar, so the end of the A part is never joined to the start of the B part. A pickup note is played with the first phrase of its part, and a 2nd ending is a phrase of its own. Select one or more phrases to isolate and loop them. Enable Append Phrases to practice multiple sections back-to-back. Use Call & Response to leave a silence after each loop so you can respond on your instrument.

Stage 3 — Potential Ornaments

A third stage appears when the tune is one that takes ornaments — Irish and related repertoire. It reads the melody and shows where a long roll, a short roll, a cut, a grace note from below or a triplet would sit naturally, counted by kind: "4× Long roll", "7× Cut". Click a kind to hear only those, so you can work on one ornament at a time instead of everything at once. These are suggestions on top of the tune, never changes to it — your notation is untouched.

Phrase Complexity Indicators

Each phrase button shows a small coloured dot that indicates its difficulty: green (easy), orange (moderate), red (hard). The score is calculated from four axes — note density, rhythmic variation, melodic intervals, and ornamentation — and weighted for your selected instrument. Use this to decide which phrases to practise first.

Ornament Style

The Ornament style selector (in the Potential Ornaments stage) adjusts how complexity is weighted for your instrument. Fiddle emphasises bowing patterns and ornaments. Guitar weights chord-change density. Flute accounts for breath cost on large leaps. Tenor Banjo (Irish/jazz melody) weights melodic intervals and ornaments; 5-String Banjo (Scruggs/bluegrass) weights roll density. For accordion, Chromatic has full range so only bellows cost on leaps is penalised; the three diatonic systems (B/C, G/C, C#/D) heavily penalise accidentals and bellows direction changes, since chromatic notes require awkward fingerings on a bisonoric instrument. Changing the instrument instantly updates the difficulty dots on all phrase buttons.

Playability Warning & Transposition Hint

Some instruments cannot play every chromatic note. When the selected instrument has a restricted range, a warning appears listing the notes absent from the instrument and suggesting the smallest transposition (in semitones) that would make the tune fully playable. The standard 2-row Diatonic G/C accordion, for example, has no C#, D#/Eb, G#/Ab, or Bb keys — a tune containing any of these notes will trigger the warning. B/C and C#/D diatonic systems are fully chromatic and never trigger this warning.

Score Complexity

The Complexity setting controls how much of the score is shown. Skeleton shows only the most important notes (long, unornamented beats), making the tune easier to read and learn. Outline adds more rhythmic detail. Full shows the complete score. Progress through the levels as your confidence grows.

Metronome & Cursor

The Metronome and Loop buttons are the player strip's, the same as outside learning; Play counts one bar in first unless the Tempo menu's Count-in says Off. Enable Cursor to see a moving highlight on the score that follows the current note. A Tablature checkbox here shows the tab staff for this tune, exactly as the tablature settings in the score toolbar do — the two are the same switch. When the tab is a fretted instrument's, the Show the instrument button above the score shows its neck under the score, lighting where each note of the phrase is played as it plays, the last two fading. These can be toggled independently at any time.

Tune Tempo Presets

When a backing style is active, five tempo presets appear when you click the tempo on the player strip: Very Slow (~40 % of session speed — for very complex passages or absolute beginners), Slow (~55 % — ideal for first learning), Practice (~70 %), Near (~85 %), and Session (100 % — the standard speed for that tune type). All BPM values are adapted to the tune's beat unit (quarter note for reels/hornpipes, dotted quarter for jigs). Click any preset to set the tempo instantly.

Tempo Progression

Enable Tempo Progression (in the Phrase stage, when a backing style is active) to have the tempo advance automatically as you practice. Enabling it resets the tempo to the Very Slow preset. After the configured number of repetitions (1–10), the tempo increases by the chosen BPM step. Progression stops at each preset boundary (Very Slow → Slow → Practice → Near → Session) rather than skipping past it. The visual rail shows your current position, the five preset markers, and a chip indicating the next step. A loop counter below the rail shows how many repetitions remain before the next advance.

Standard Session Speed

The Session preset (the last of the five tempo presets) locks the tempo to the tune's standard session BPM and is equivalent to enabling Standard Session Speed. Use it for a final full-speed run-through before playing with others. Note: enabling Tempo Progression overrides this setting and resets the tempo to the Very Slow preset.