User Guide

Overview

iComposer has several different views and operation modes.

Figure 1 is the Tracks View where you can add, delete, mix and export sound tracks of your polyphony music.

Figure 2 is the Staff Editing View where you can record hum, transcribe musical notes, change instrument and playback your music.

Figure 3 is the Drum Set editing view.

Figure 4 is the Project View where you can new, delete and rename your music creating projects.

Don’t be scared by this long guide, you don’t need to read all of this page. Actually iComposer is intuitive and easy to use, you can just remember the following 3 basic operation modes then try most functions out by yourself.

1. Signle Tap is to activate/deactivate something;
2. Double Tap is to open/change/insert something at the tap point;
3. Slide by single finger or two fingers or three fingers;

 

TRACKS VIEW AND MULTIPLE VOICE PARTS

In Tracks view, you can manage sound tracks(or voice parts), export compressed file and standard midi file or play the whole music.

Buttons on the Top:

1. The “folder button” bring you to the project management view, where you can open a project, rename current project and remove outdated project
2. Single tap the “right tick button” to export your music as Standard midi file then upload it to this site
3. Single tap the “plus button” to add a new track
4. Single tap the “minus button” to  remove the selected track(the blue one of those tracks)
5. Simplely the “triangle play button” to play all tracks excluding those are muted
6. More simplely the “square stop button” to stop the play music

Operations for track:

1. Single Tap on a track to select the track
2. LOOK HERE, Double Tap on a track to edit staff of this track, the staff editor is the main place to record your humming, transcribe the recorded sound to notes, edit the sheet, playback with different instruments
3. Drags volume bar of a track to adjust volume of the track
4. Tap on mute bar to switch a track’s mute/unmute mode
5. when you have mutliple tracks, you can drag track list down of up with a single finger touched then moved up or down

 

STAFF EDITING VIEW AND RECORDING, TRANSCRIBING, SYNTHESIZING

In the STAFF EDITING view, you can record sound you hummed, transcribe the sound to musical notes and play back (or synthesize) the score with different instruments.

Buttons of Staff Editing View

1. Single tap the “microphone button” (the top one) to start to record.
2. A message box will bounce out to let you know the status of recording. Due to iComposer need to initialize and prepare the analysis parameters for recording and recognition, there is a 3~4 seconds delay between you tap the record button and iComposer ready to record your voice. So please keep in silence as possible as you can until the 3 seconds count down to 0 and the message box shows “recording”.
3. Tap the “Stop” button in the message box to stop recording.
4. After you record the sound of melody, you can tap the “5 line staff button” (the one just below the “microphone button”) to transcribe your melody to music notes. You may find that the notes transcribing behaves in different ways with the same sound, that’s because iComposer changes its transcribing strategy according to your Clef setting and selected instrument.
5. Tap the “horn button”  to listen what you have created!
6. If you click the “arrow button” at the bottom, you will return to tracks view.

Waveform Panel
“Waveform panel” shows you sound energy envelope. If you can see clear peaks and valleys in the waveform, you sound will be possible to be well transcribed. If the waveform doesn’t fluctuate significantly, you may have to hum again in slower speed and insert short stops between sound segments.

Play your recorded sound.
Double tap on the “waveform panel” will play back what you were humming. Single tap on the “waveform panel” will stop playing when the sound is playing.

Adjust the start point of recording or playing.
Touch the “golden flag” cursor on the “waveform panel” with single finger and move you finger will drag the cursor elsewhere, this operation will change the start position of recording and playing. That means, if you drag the “golden flag”  cursor to the mid of waveform and start to record, the last half part of the recorded sound will be erased or replaced with new sound you are humming now.

Shift the waveform
[TWO FINGERS, TWO TOUCHES]
Touch the “waveform panel” with 2 fingers and move will shift the waveform right or left.

Change the instrument.
Double tap on the “instrument name” at the bottom of screen will call out “instruments selection view”. You can change current instrument in that.

Drum and non-drum Instruments.
Depending on the instrument you picked, one of two types of staff editor will be showed. One is five line staff editor, the other one is drum set editor.

Drum set editor will be activated only when you select one of the last three instruments, they are Standard Kit, Electronically Kit and Orchestra Kit. All other instruments’ default editor are “5 line staff” editor.

 

HOW TO EDIT FIVE LINE STAFF

Switch the clef between treble and bass
Double tap on the CLEF, try now!

Set key signature, time signature and BPM(Beat Per Minute)
Double tap on existed key signature, time signature or the instruments at the bottom will let you set key signature, time signature, BPM and pick a different instrument.

Insert a musical note
Double tap on blank area of the line or space you want the new note lives at. Then you can select the note types and adjust the intensity of that note, the note button will be rotating is you select it. Once you selected the note, tap elsewhere to dismiss the notes selector.

Insert and change a rest note
Slide vertically (up-down) with ONE finger will insert a 1/8 rest note, double tap on a rest note will change the note’s duration in order of: 1/16 -> 1/8 ->1/4 ->1/2 -> full -> 1/16

Add a tie
Slide horizontally (left-right) with ONE finger will add an arc on notes, it’s tie, though it’s not as beautiful as ties drawn on paper.

Select a note
Single tap on a note or tie, a halo will cover the note. That means the note is selected.
Can’t see the halo? OK, maybe you can look for a yellow mask or yellow shadow as well on a note. I like the word “halo”.

Delete a note
Select a note or arc, then tap the delete button(the red cross button).

Change a note
Double tap a note, you can change it.

Increase of decrease all notes’ pitch
[TWO FINGERS, TWO TOUCHES]
Grab the staff with two fingers touch then slide down or slide up will decrease or increase all notes’ pitch scale by scale.

Move a note
Select a note, then drag and drop it.

Note’s color
Note’s color indicates the note’s intensity level in playback. Colors from blue to purple are mapping to intensity levels from low to high. Slide the volume bar to change color/intensity level of a note.

Switch staff between large, small, one-staff, two-staff mode
You can edit a grand staff in staff editor. Although iPhone has a luxury large screen compared to most other mobile phones, it is still a phone can be hold in your hand. The limited screen size makes it difficult to precisely point in a grand staff if you don’t want to use auxiliary pointing pen. So you may need to do editing in a single large staff mode and do review in the grand staff mode. A grand staff consists of two single staff, the first one is on the top, the second one is on the bottom. Gestures to switch staff mode are as below:

Expand to Grand Staff
[TWO FINGERS, TWO TOUCHES]
Two fingers slide away from each other vertically.

Switch to the first part of Grand Staff
[TWO FINGERS, TWO TOUCHES]
Two fingers slide close to each other vertically. The finger on top should move further than the other.

Switch to the second part of Grand Staff
[TWO FINGERS, TWO TOUCHES]
Two fingers slide close to each other vertically. The finger on bottom should move further than the other.

Shift the staff
[TWO FINGERS, TWO TOUCHES]
Touch the staff you wanna shift, with 2 fingers, then slide left or right.
Use 3 fingers will shift the staff faster.

 

HOW TO USE DRUM SET EDITOR

Because drums work in a different way, iComposer gives you a special drum editor for percussive music editing. When you select one of drum kits in the instruments selector, the “drum set editor” will be activated.

Drum set editor is based on a beat canvas. There are five lines on the canvas, each line is composed of a series of bricks, each brick represents a beat, and default duration of the beat is equal to a sixteenth note(semiquaver).

You can assign a new drum to a line at a certain position, all bricks after the position will be played with the new drum’s sound.

Add or delete a beat
Just single tap on a brick.

Change the intensity of a beat
Double tap on a glow brick, its color will be changed in the order of: blue(lowest intensity) -> green(low intensity) -> yellow(normal intensity) -> red (high intensity)-> purple(highest intensity),

Change the drum of a line
Slide vertically on the lines will call “Drum Picker” out, spin it to the drum you want, and then click other area of the screen, a new drum will be assigned to a line at where you slide.
Also you can double tap an existed drums title to call Drum Picker out to change the drum.