A metronome on its own clock — with or without the étude.
A full metronome on its own clock — use it with or without the étude. The étude subscribes to this grid. (Shared component: every At-Etudes app carries this metronome, first block, this look.) Its first button starts and stops the click (stopping it stops the étude too); tap the second in time to set the tempo, or type or slide it, 15 to 300. The time signature and subdivision are the grid the étude walks on, the accent marks each bar's first beat, and the speaker mutes the click — muted is the volume at zero.
Notepad
that note is filed nowhere —
Centricity
This card sets the ground everything stands on: the key and its scale — major, harmonic minor or melodic minor — and so the seven notes the neck draws faintly. When the object is a scale, you can narrow those seven to a pentatonic, a pair of triads or any set of degrees, from the list or by clicking the note buttons, and choose the centre the mode is read from: held as a pedal, or following each chord's root. Under a chord the note buttons can't be clicked; they light as the étude plays each tone, with its role above it.
Progression
bar splitbpm
This card says what is played, over which chords. The object names the material — a scale or mode, a dyad, triad or tetrad, a 9th, 11th or 13th chord, or a shell — and the tones beneath list it by role (R, 3, 5, 7…): type fewer to narrow it, or others and the object renames itself to match. The chords come from a cycle (with the degree it starts on), a stock form, or your own: romans or chord symbols, one per bar, or chord symbols between | bar lines |; when your note holds a chart block, one click brings it in. The bar split, tempo and click along the top are the same clock as everywhere else on the page.
Settings
A preset sets up one of the journal page's exercises — the strings, the placement, the object and its tones — and leaves every control live to change; the key, the scale and the centre stay whatever you set them to. The card remembers which preset you started from, and says so once you've changed what it set. Below, it describes the whole étude as it stands, in words, updating as you change anything; the transport along the top plays and steps it from here.
The chart line
the chart line
The whole progression in one row: one chip per chord, as wide as the beats it lasts. The dot is the root's degree colour in the key (no dot means the root is outside the key), and the numeral under the symbol is its function. Click a chip to jump there; the row scrolls to keep the current bar in view. When a reference tone sits under a chord, a second line names the chord that stack makes.
On the neckbar splitbpm
Motif
Placement
Movement
The figure is
Figure
Moving the box. Drag the ■ grip to move it — across frets,
and across strings with it. Drag the ● handles on its top and bottom edges to choose which
strings it spans. With the neck focused, ← → step the frame one scale note and
↑ ↓ slide the whole set across the strings. Clicking any note on the anchor string
seats the frame there. The numbered squares choose the strings one by one — skips are
how you ask for a spread.
The neck draws the key's notes faintly and this bar's notes in full colour, by their function (the line under the neck says against what); click any note to hear it. The rail beside it shapes the motif: one note per string or a line of three, one of each tone or every one in the box, strummed or arpeggiated, and an optional figure — string numbers as a pattern, or roles like R-3-7-5 as tones. The bar split, tempo and metronome checkbox in the header are the same clock the Metronome card owns. Click a string number (right of the neck) to add or drop it; click the neck, then ← → slide the window.
The readout
the readout
The neck, in words, for the bar you're on: the key or mode and its notes, the bar and its chord, where the frame sits and how many notes it holds, which strings and how the notes fall across them, how they sound, and what the figure, the reference tone, the sounded bass and the pad are doing. Read it left to right; it changes with every bar and every control. Anything that couldn't be placed is said in red. Nothing here is clickable.
Tuning
named
Retune the six strings for this étude; the neck and the sound follow. Step any string a semitone down or up, or all six together; the named row sets a whole tuning in one click, and standard is always one click back. A step that would cross the next string or leave its six-semitone range doesn't happen — it says why, under that string. Shut, the card's line names the tuning, so an altered neck is never hidden.
Mixer
the mixer — the voice, the reference tone, the sounded bass, the pad, and each bus's level
voice
harmony100
reference tonesounded bass
bass100
pad100
What sounds, and how loud. The first list picks the instrument sound for the notes; each slider sets one level — the harmony, the bass, the pad — and its speaker mutes it (muted is the slider at zero). The reference tone is a fretted note on string 5 or 6 under the harmony — the root, another chosen tone, or a scale tone a 3rd or 5th below — and the readout names the chord the stack makes over it; the sounded bass is a pitch with no string, never drawn, that plays under any set of strings. The pad holds the bar's chord above the guitar, also never drawn.
The étude — end to end
Every bar of the étude, the current one shaded. Treble carries the material, written an octave above where it sounds — the 8 under the clef — in degree colours, each note with its role; arpeggios and figures are written as runs, and a bar that can't be placed says why in red. The bass clef carries the reference tone, at sounding pitch, when one is chosen. Click a note to hear it, or anywhere else in a bar to jump there.
On the keys
This bar's notes on a piano, C2 to C6: dots in their degree colours, each labelled with its role, and the reference tone as a dashed ring. A key rings as its note sounds. Click any key to hear it.