AudioTheory Guitars News

Today is launch day for AudioTheory Piano Keys. This is a brand new piece of software designed to give you real time visual and audio feedback when learning and practicing the piano. I'm super excited to finally be sharing this with you, and to coincide with the launch there is also a big new update for AudioTheory Guitars.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1513510/AudioTheory_Piano_Keys

[h3]A new look to celebrate[/h3]

AudioTheory Guitars now has two additional themes you can select in the options. The classic theme is still the default however, so if you like things as they currently are you don't need to worry, not everyone likes change and that's okay.



[h3]Minimalist mode[/h3]

You might notice something else different in the screenshots; they contain a lot less interface than usual. This is the new 'minimalist view' that can be toggled on or off using the eye icon on the right hand side of the screen. It's great for when you want to focus on practicing without the immediate need to change any settings. If you do need to adjust these, they're only ever a click away.



[h3]Chromatic highlighting[/h3]

This is the culmination of numerous highlighting enhancements that have been made over the last few updates. The new chromatic highlighting options mean there is full flexibility on how sharp and flat notes highlight not only within a scale preset but also in chromatic mode (using all notes) as well as any custom subsection.

I am confident that this is a much improved solution for how to display sharp and flats. Firstly, two changes to how this previously worked:

• Sharp and flat notes now display with coloured highlighting even when a scale preset is not being used
  
• The previous sharp and flat settings in the options cog are no more
  

Sharps and flats now display as default as sharps. To change this all you need to do is click on any sharp note in the bottom left and it will swap to a flat. This will automatically update so the display and highlighting on the keyboard and fretboard match.

If you load a scale preset, this will automatically update all the sharp and flat notes so that they display as appropriate for the specific scale, but then they can be changed if desired by clicking on the names.

What this means is that in the majority of situations, the sharp and flat notes will automatically display in the format you'll want. And if you do want to swap one, it's really easy to do so.



[h3]New scale selector[/h3]

The mini-scale selector has been neatened up, and there's a new look for the fullscreen selector. Minor scales have been split out into their own tab and there's now also a set of Dim scales available.

[h3]New octave selector[/h3]

The octave selector has been revised to better match that of a real-world device. It now starts at 0 and can be increased to +1 or decreased to -1. There is also a new option in the settings to show the MIDI input octave directly in the main view. I'd recommend turning this on if you are using a MIDI device and frequently change the octave directly on the device. This (now labelled as 'input octave') should match the device to ensure highlighting works as expected.

For example: if you increase the octave by +1 on your MIDI controller, then you should set the input octave as +1 too as this will ensure the device continues to highlight the correct octave. Meanwhile the output octave independently sets the pitch of the application software instruments.



This update also includes a whole bunch of miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks designed to make it the best version of AudioTheory Guitars yet. Highlights include:

• A new button on the scale selector for playback looping
  
• Lock to scale now defaults to 'Yes'
  
• Modal scale backgrounds now correctly update in the mini popup
  
• Sustain state now correctly saves
  
• The preset name cross no longer shows in some scenarios when a preset was not loaded
  

And that concludes today's update. Thanks for reading.

Fraser

AudioTheory Guitars has been updated to version 1.18.1. This is a small patch to address the following:

–Reverted to the original set of default chords
–Sharpness on fret numbers fixed
–Click and drag chords now works with slide out menu expanded
–Application now properly checks to resize if swapping from a 16:9 windowed to 16:10 fullscreen view
–Dim chords no longer show the '(no capo)' label if their start position is higher than the capo
–Fix for incompatibility between exact root note option and power/ barre chords with capo

Okay, I wasn't totally sure what to call this update as it adds in a few different features and all of them are new and exciting. But first, a quick announcement, AudioTheory Piano Keys will be launching on the 24th September 2021.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1513510/AudioTheory_Piano_Keys

This new piece of music theory software takes all the features you know and love form AudioTheory Guitars but reworks them it into a piano-focused package. If you haven't already, now is a great time to add it to your Wishlist as this way you'll get an email from Steam next month when it's available.

Anyway, back to AudioTheory Guitars...




[h3]Improved Chord Selector[/h3]

The first new feature is an improved chord selector for open chords. This mirrors the layout already in place for power and barre chords, where you select a cord as a combination of a root note and position. It's easier to use as there are less buttons than before, you can see from the selector itself which chord is currently loaded, and I've added a set of open chords for the sharp/ flat notes so there's a whole bunch of new chord shapes to choose from too.

This view is now also used on the fullscreen selector page.



[h3]24 Fret View[/h3]

This is the option to select a full 24 fretboard diagram as an alternative to the default 15 fret diagram. This lets you see two octaves at once, and comes in handy for a few obscure chord/ capo combinations that go past fret 15.



You can choose the desired fretboard size from the options popup.



[h3]Relative shape/ exact note selection options for chords[/h3]

When you have a capo applied on the fretboard, you will see an additional tab for choosing between a 'relative shape' and 'exact root note', which are two different ways to think about the chord you are selecting.



'Relative shape' was the only selection method previously. This is what you typically see on online tabs for songs played with a capo. For example, a C cord 'shape' will always be the same, but the actual root note of the chord increases with the capo. So at capo position 3, the actual chord being played is a D# (C+3).

It will depend on the context, but working with shapes is often the easiest way to understand what you're playing. However, for the times where you want to see the exact chord for the selected root note, you've now got the option to identify a chord this way too.



[h3]Clear Highlighting Delay[/h3]

There's another new option in the settings too, this is three different time durations for which the keyboard colour highlighting will clear once input is no longer received. By default this is turned off, which means as soon as you unpress a note then it stops being highlighted – what you see on screen directly matches up to the input.

The two alternatives are a short (roughly .2 seconds) and a long (roughly 1 second) delay before the highlighting is cleared. These are primarily designed for fast piano players – if you're quickly sending input via a connected MIDI device then real-time highlighting means that the notes are sometimes only highlighted for a very small amount of time, and this is a great way to keep them emphasised for longer.



One more change, I've moved the per-string tuning into the options popup. This makes the fullscreen fretboard view look a bit neater.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading, and please look forward to the release of AudioTheory Piano Keys next month.

AudioTheory Guitars version 1.17.0 includes several new features and improvements. Let's have a look at what's new:

[h3]Chord Reordering[/h3]

Whilst some of the updates have predominantly focused around a single big feature, this one is more of a collection of smaller improvements. Still, chord reordering is perhaps the most exciting new addition. It's simple but useful, when hovering over chords in the main application 'chord box' you will see a new arrow icon. You can click and drag the chord using this icon, allowing you to quickly reorder the selection of chords.



[h3]Relative Note Naming[/h3]

Back in the 1.13.0 update, Fixed do solfège was added in as an alternate format for displaying the note names. As an extension of this I have now added in two further options for the names to display using relative values. These are movable do solfège (Do Re Mi...) and relative Roman numerals (I II III...). Both display the notes relative to the selected scale preset, making them useful for understanding or learning a new scale.



When using relative names you will notice a combination of uppercase and lowercase characters. These can be used to quickly see the pattern of major/ minor and diminished chords within the scale. For example, a major scale goes For example a major scale goes...

I – major
ii – minor
iii – minor
IV – major
V – major
vi° – dim




[h3]DSP Latency Settings[/h3]

I've added in some new optimisations to the app's latency settings (this is the fractional delay between input and playback). The DSP buffer size can now be configured (between 1024 and 32 samples) in the settings, with the idea being that a lower buffer size will result in less latency, but as this requires more CPU power you may incur audio distortions if it's reduced too much.

The buffer also now starts out at a platform-optimised size, meaning latency has been reduced without the need to adjust the settings, however full control is now available to tweak this further.

[h3]Hotkeys[/h3]

Some hotkeys are now in place to optimise control of the app:

Num keys 1–4: quickly swamp note languages
1 – English
2 – Fixed Do solfège
3 – Relative Roman numerals
4 – Movable Do solfège

Ctrl (Windows)/Cmd (Mac) –O: Open preset from file
Ctrl (Windows)/Cmd (Mac) –S: Save preset to file
Ctrl (Windows)/Cmd (Mac) Shift –O: Toggle keyboard overlay view
Ctrl (Windows)/Cmd (Mac) Shift –M: Toggle mute
Ctrl (Windows)/Cmd (Mac) –K: Toggle QWERTY keyboard input
Ctrl (Windows)/Cmd (Mac) –L: Toggle lock to scale




[h3]And the rest...[/h3]

Here's a quick round-up of everything else that's changed:

• Improved MIDI response for highlighting. This works alongside the latency settings to improve MIDI input support for the app.
  
• Optimisations have been made to how note presses are handled as well as how the app buttons work. This results in a slight performance boost.
  
• The saved file name is no longer displayed if the save dialogue box is cancelled
  
• Fix for scale highlighting overlapping with note selection box at reduced application widths
  
• The 'set from chords' button now updates to a specific scale preset if a match is found
  
• Fixed a bug where one of the Grapefruit synth high C notes played at the wrong octave
  
• App now launches in windowed mode as default (once it's been run once it will continue to load using the last used resolution settings)
  

That's all for today, thanks for reading.

Fraser

Today's update to AudioTheory Guitars is more exiting than it initially sounds. It's a reworking of the application settings, and this is (in fact!) very exciting because it improves the ways you can customise and control the software.

[h3]The new settings popup[/h3]

For the longest time I had been reluctant to swap out the existing settings menu as I liked how it could sit open alongside the main application view. The downside to this was a limit to the available space, and as new features have been updated and adding it, things were starting to get a little cramped in there.

Anyway, swapping over to new, much larger popup, has solved a whole bunch of problems. There is now a lot more space, giving room for the current settings to breath and making it easy to add in some extra stuff there wasn't previously room for.



[h3]So let's have a look at what's changed...[/h3]

• The options for saving and loading a preset now come complete with some cool icons (the same as those used in AudioTheory Grids!)
  
  
• Guitar config. now sits as part of the single popup view (rather than in its own separate tab).
  
  
• The keyboard overlay type (previously indicated by a button next to the keyboard icon) now has its own dedicated settings toggle, with options for the full and partial overlay.
  

[h3]And here's what's new...[/h3]

• There is now an option to turn off the feature where chords are auto loaded with a scale preset (introduced in version 1.15.0).
  
  
• The way that MIDI input is handled has been reworked and there are now new settings in place to support this. The main octave (the one just above the piano keys), was previously sensitive to MIDI input, essentially requiring the MIDI device's own octave range to match whatever was set here. This is now no longer the case and the octave here is purely for playback.
  

What this last point means is that he MIDI input range is now configured separately (in the new settings popup). The big advantage of doing things this way is that you can ensure everything is synced correctly in the settings and then adjust the main piano octave without the need to also change octave on the MIDI device.

There is a new plus/ minus selector you will find in the settings under the name 'MIDI input mod'. If your MIDI device is not registering at the correct octave you can adjust this value (and/ or the octave settings on your device itself) to get the two in sync. Plus, if you are ever experiencing issues with MIDI input, there is also a message here that will log any MIDI input that the application receives.



This displays as both a raw input value as well as the target note to play, and you can use this info to easily debug any issues with MIDI playback. The note on the far left of the piano is C1, so if the note on the far left of your MIDI device is returning C(-1) you won't receive any output as you're playing two octaves too low! This can be fixed by either increasing the MIDI input mod. by +2, or also by increasing the octave on the device itself by +2.

You might be wondering if these more comprehensive MIDI options are in part due to the fact that MIDI input is a key component of the upcoming AudioTheory Piano Keys. The answer is yes, it's been the excuse I needed to add all this in and I'm very please to also bring it back into AudioTheory Guitars!




There's also a couple more miscellaneous features that have made their way into this update too:

• The current scale is now highlighted on the mini selector when it's open.
  
• The scale tab selector now remembers its last used position
  

Thanks for reading and keep practicing.

Fraser