Recording sessions

From an orchestra to a trio — the click in every ear, the score on every stand, the take on the bar line.

A MusicXML part on an iPad, the bar playing shaded — First violins

TACET: this player rests the whole movement — The tuba

BarBeatCue leads the session; the DAW records it

BarBeatCue does not record — your DAW does. What BarBeatCue does is lead: the click and the count-in, the score in front of every player, the place in the song, the same clock as the DAW.

The Mac's window on the orchestra: the arrange over the strings' stems and, below it, the Score pane with the four string parts, the bar playing shaded — The score below the arrange: what the strings have in front of them, on the Mac.

What it does in the room

The click and the count-in on the headphone feed alone, through every tempo and meter change of the map.
The score on every stand — the PDF part as printed, or MusicXML drawn by the app — following the take, its pages turning themselves; a conductor's iPad or a screen on an Apple TV with the bar and beat in large type.
A punch-in that lands on the bar — go to a bar or a part, and while playing the jump waits for the bar line.
Takes in a row — vamp a section for as many passes as you want, the count of passes on every screen.
A slower pass — play the song at another tempo; the backing stems follow, the score and the click with them.
One clock with the DAW — BarBeatCue sends MTC or LTC, so the DAW's transport and the players' screens agree; or it follows the DAW's timecode, as it follows any house system.

Go to Bar — Jumps to the bar — while playing, on the next Quantize line.

Vamp Transport ▸ Vamp ▸ Vamp · V — Loops the part the song is in until you switch it off — or for a number of plays. V again ends it at the end of the play it is in; the song then runs on.

Count-in Song ▸ Count-in ▸ Count-in · ⇧K — Clicks the chosen number of bars before the song starts, when it plays from the top (and before a gapless chain into it). A click switches it on or off; a right-click picks the bars.

Six stands or thirty

The Mac serves every screen the same way, whether a trio of iPads or a whole orchestra's stands: each one reads the Mac's clock over the session's WiFi and draws its own player's part. Here is a full orchestra's Screens pane — twenty-four players and the choir's Apple TV — and the program as a strip, two movements chained into each other.

The Screens pane with an orchestra of twenty-five: strings, winds, brass, percussion, harp, piano, the conductor, the soprano and chorus master, the choir's Apple TV; the tuba and the offstage trumpet TACET

The program as a strip: a fanfare, the first movement chained into the second, the interlude and the finale

Set once: the strings, winds and brass read MusicXML parts drawn by the app (or the PDF a copyist printed, like the double bass here), a player whose part is not in a movement sees TACET, and a part's end can jump or loop — the first movement's opening is a vamp twice over until the conductor is ready.

Set it up

The network — one router, every iPad finding the Mac · the audio — the click to the headphone feed · timecode — MTC and LTC to the DAW, or following it.