Starting with the key ‘a’ on your keyboard find out
how to play a scale all the way up — and then all the
way down. Don’t worry that some notes are on the
keyboard twice — it’s meant to be that way.
Once you have practiced a tune you can record it by
holding the Ctrl key down and playing the notes. The
letters appearing in the text box are different to the
letters you are typing in — that’s alright, the text
box holds the npoes in Sol Fa. The ‘a’ key plays a Doh
in Sol Fa — use the tutorial to learn more about Sol
Fa.
As an alternative to Sol Fa you could, if you wanted,
show the notes in the text box with note names like on
the piano, where notes have the names A, B, C, D, E, F
and G. The ‘Note Entry’ button controls what is
displayed here.
The left and right arrow keys not only move along the
text box but play the notes that are passed. The Up
and Down arrow keys change a note up or down. With the
Shift key held down the Up and Down arrows make notes
Sharp or Flat as some tunes need these — see the
tutorial for more details.
The ‘Octave’ button lets the tune be played up or down
a number of octaves without changing what is in the
text box. The ‘Key’ button allows the key to be
changed. There are two sets of these buttons. One for
how it sounds (Audio) and the other altering how the
music score is shown (Score).
If you play the tune back you will find that all the
notes you keyed are the same length — the rhythm has
to be added separately — this is done by adding quotes
(single quotes) or spaces.
Inserting 2 single quotes means that shorter time
divisions for notes are used — with 3 giving shorter
still. You can swap between different time divisions
at any time — a single quote will revert back to the
default value for a note.
A space after a note will make it longer by an extra
time division — longer notes have more spaces. Dotted
notes can also be entered if you understand these (the
tutorial will tell you).