Song Editor — User Guide

The Song Editor turns a recording into a playable feedBack chart. You line a grid up to the music, place the notes, mark the tempo and sections, save the editable .feedpak project, and export it where the rest of the app can use it.

This guide is the same content you get in-app from Help ▸ User Guide. It covers the FeedBack shortcut profile (the default). Three other profiles remap some keys to match muscle memory you may already have: Logical (Logic-style — K clicks the metronome, Q quantizes, ,/. step by beat, C loops the selection), Cableton (Ableton-style — Ctrl+U quantizes, Ctrl+1/2 narrow/widen the grid, Ctrl+4 toggles snap, Ctrl+L loops), and Legacy (EOF). Anything a profile doesn't remap keeps its FeedBack key. Switch profiles in Help ▸ Shortcut profile or the shortcut panel (?).

The whole journey, at a glance — a feedpak goes from nothing to playable in six steps, and this guide follows them in order:

Start (§1) — create a project from a recording, an existing chart, or both.
Line up the grid (§6) — the tempo map fits bars and beats to the recording.
Chart the notes (§4) — place, edit, and mark up every note and technique.
Build out the tracks (§5, §7) — more parts, keys with hands, drums, studio stems.
Hear it (§3) — guide claps, the metronome, loops, and the mixer console.
Save and export (§9) — Ctrl+S preserves the project; export publishes it.

1. Start a project

Opening the editor with nothing loaded lands you at the front door:

Load… opens a feedpak from your library to edit. Create New starts a project — and it takes almost anything as a starting point:

A recording — drop in an audio file (MP3, WAV, FLAC, OGG, M4A, OPUS, AAC, WEM) or paste a YouTube URL. You get a timeline over the waveform: set the grid (§6) and chart from scratch.
An existing chart — Guitar Pro (GP3–GP8), MIDI (its tempo map comes along), MusicXML (TAB guitar/bass or keys), community arrangement XML, or an existing .feedpak/archive. Every format normalizes into one internal model, so editing works the same wherever the chart came from.
Both at once — the recommended start. Add one audio file and a chart file; auto-sync then lines the imported chart up to the recording bar by bar, so you begin from a chart that already follows the take instead of a straight metronomic grid.
Nothing at all — pick your arrangements from the chips (Lead / Rhythm / Bass / Keys / Drums…) and start with an empty timeline.

Everything you add lands in one table: every audio source and every track inside every chart file, each with its instrument and note count. Check the tracks you want as arrangements, and pick one audio row as the Guide — the recording the tempo map follows. Extra audio files stay available as separate source tracks.

Song details (title, artist, album, art) auto-fill from the import where they can — Find cover…, Identify from audio…, and Match… fill in the rest from MusicBrainz. Then hit Create & Open in Editor.

A few sources arrive through their own doors, any time after creation:

File ▸ Import — bring another GP / MIDI / XML chart into the open project.
＋ Track (New Track) — add any track to the open project: an audio track (a recording — stem or full mix), or a MIDI/transcription instrument (Lead, Rhythm, Bass, Keys, Drums) started empty or imported from a file (§5). Record MIDI still captures a live take from a connected device into a keys track.
MusicXML — add it directly in Create New's Content Import, or use Keys from MusicXML in an open song. Authored TAB imports as a fretted track with its tuning and string/fret positions; grand-staff notation imports as keys and keeps the score's left/right hand assignments (§5).
Studio stems — after creating, load per-instrument stems (vocals, bass, drums…) through the stem manager (§5) for isolated listening and per-stem charting.
A GoPlayAlong sidecar brings bar→time sync points only (no notes) — useful for lining a grid up fast.

Autosave is not a thing. Importing creates an unsaved project, not a library item. Save early with Ctrl+S; nothing touches your library until you choose Export to Library (§9).

2. The workspace

Menu bar (top) — every command, grouped by what it acts on (File, Edit, Add, Note, Track, View, Transport, Tempo/Grid, Help). Menus follow your shortcut profile and grey out commands that don't apply right now.
Toolbars — quick toggles for the transport, snap, views, and the BPM / Offset boxes. Toolbars are collapsible; density presets live in View.
Timeline canvas (center) — the waveform, the beat grid, and your notes. Zoom and scroll here; this is where you click to edit.
Transport bar (bottom) — play/stop, the playhead clock, loop, count-in, metronome, and follow-playhead.
Inspector (side) — details for whatever is selected: a note's fret and techniques, a barline's BPM, a section's name.
Companion strips — a fretboard strip for fretted tracks (shows candidate positions from the position resolver — click one to assign) and a drum pad strip for drum tracks.
Mixer (Shift+C) — per-track volume / mute / solo. Audio and transcription tracks are live together by default; mute or solo the channels you want to hear. Solo means isolate: soloing any track — audio or transcription — silences everything unsoloed, the Master Mix included. Solo several tracks to hear them together (for example a transcription track plus the Master Mix to keep the recording as your reference). Mute always wins over solo.

Press ? at any time for the searchable shortcut panel, or Ctrl+K for the command palette.

Canvas appearance

If the beat grid is hard to see on your screen — or you just want the canvas your way — open View ▸ Canvas appearance… and adjust:

Grid lines — strength of the beat/measure lines and lane separators. Turn this up if beat lines are hard to see.
Brightness — overall canvas background lift.
Color intensity and Hue — restyle the canvas palette.

Changes apply live, and only to the canvas structure — string colors, note colors, selection, and the playhead always keep their meaning. Reset to defaults puts everything back.

3. Play and navigate

Space plays/stops from the playhead.
Follow playhead (Shift+L) keeps the view with the playhead during playback. By default the view jumps ahead a page when the playhead reaches the edge; turn on View ▸ Scroll in Play to pin the playhead and glide the timeline under it instead (Logic's continuous-scroll manner).
Loop A/B (Alt+B) compares the recording against your guide so you can hear whether the chart matches the take.
Count-in adds a bar of clicks before playback so you can catch the entry.
Guide claps (C) tick the charted notes; the metronome ticks the beat. Use them to hear whether notes land where the grid says.
Move around: Page Up/Page Down jump beat to beat; Alt+←/Alt+→ jump note to note; Ctrl+Page Up/Down jump grid lines. Set numbered bookmarks with Shift+Alt+1…9 and jump to them with Alt+1…9.
Scroll and zoom the canvas: the mouse wheel pans and Ctrl+wheel zooms (Alt+wheel stretches the piano-roll lanes); the overview strip above the lanes is a real horizontal scrollbar — drag it to skim a long song, double-click it to fit the whole song, or grab its ends to zoom to a span.

4. Edit notes

Select a note by clicking it; drag a box to select several. Then:

Chords: clicking one note of a chord selects just that note (FeedBack / Logical / Cableton), or the whole strum (Legacy EOF) — the shortcut profile sets the default. Alt-click always does the opposite, so you can grab one note or the whole chord either way without switching profiles. Change the default in the shortcut panel (?) under Chord click. (Piano-roll parts always select one note — same-time notes there are independent voices, not a strum.)

Fret — press F to edit, or type 0–9 (Shift+0 for 10, Ctrl++ / Ctrl+- to nudge).
String — ↑ / ↓ move the selection between strings. Shift+↑ / Shift+↓ move it while keeping the pitch (in the piano roll these cycle the fretting position for the same note).
Timing — drag a note along the timeline. With snap on (G to toggle, , / . to change resolution) notes land on the grid; switch snap to target audio onsets instead of grid lines when you're matching a loose take. Nudge the selection one grid step earlier / later with ← / → (these move the playhead when nothing is selected).
Sustain — drag a note's tail to shorten / lengthen (or Note ▸ Shorten / Lengthen sustain; [ / ] in the EOF profile).
Duplicate the selection to the next position with Ctrl+D; select all notes with Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on macOS); select all matching string/fret with Ctrl+L; resnap to the grid with Shift+R. Select All remains a normal text command while editing a name or typing in a field.
Split a sustained note: Edit ▸ Split notes at playhead cuts every selected (or spanning) note at the playhead; the Scissors tool (below) does the same with a click.

Click tools

Press T to open the tool palette at your cursor (like a DAW's tool menu), then press a key — or click — to choose what left-click does:

Pointer (V) — the default: select, move, resize.
Pencil (B) — draw mode: click empty canvas to add a note instantly (snapped, no dialog — type a digit right after to set its fret), click a note to remove it.
Eraser (E) — click a note to delete it.
Marquee (M) — drag always box-selects, even starting on a note.
Mute (U) — click a note to toggle its mute.
Scissors (C) — click inside a sustained note to split it there.

Shift/Ctrl-click always selects, whatever tool is active. Pressing T twice enters Tempo Map (in the Logical profile, T,T returns to the Pointer instead — Logic's convention — and G enters Tempo Map). In the Cableton profile, plain B toggles the Pencil like Live's Draw Mode. The Legacy (EOF) profile keeps its keys exactly as-is — find the palette in View ▸ there. The right-click setting in the shortcut panel (?) can run any of these tools on the right button instead of the context menu.

Techniques

Toggle techniques on the selected note(s) — the essentials:

Key	Technique	Key	Technique
`H`	Hammer-on	`P`	Pull-off
`B`	Bend	`S`	Slide (pitched)
`M`	Palm mute	`V`	Vibrato
`N`	Natural harmonic	`Shift+N`	Pinch harmonic
`A`	Accent	`K`	Cycle pick direction
`X`	Mute (open)	`Shift+X`	Mute (retain fret)

Slap/pop (Shift+O / O), tap (Y), tremolo, link-next and more are under Note ▸ Techniques with their keys shown.

The editor's playability lint flags fingerings that are physically awkward and the drum limb lint flags hits a human couldn't play — both advise, they never block or auto-change your chart.

5. Tracks (arrangements)

A song can hold several tracks — lead, rhythm, bass, keys, drums. Each track gets the view that fits it automatically:

String view — lanes per string, for guitar/bass.
Piano roll — for keys tracks (and available for fretted tracks as a read-only reference, with resolver-assisted authoring).
Tab / Notation — the live engraved score of a fretted track, as tablature or a standard-notation staff (both at once via View ▸ Score staff). Click a beat to select its notes and seek; editing stays in String view / the roll, and the engraving follows every edit.
Drum grid — piece lanes, for drum tracks. Drums get the same three-view set from the dropdown: Drum grid, Piano roll (the grid laid out on General-MIDI percussion notes, pitch-ordered like a DAW drum roll), and Notation (the tab engraved on a percussion staff, click-to-select included; editing stays in the grid). The Rows button additionally cycles the grid through Full, Compact, and GM roll piece rows — and returning from Piano roll puts you back on whichever you were using.

Switch with the view dropdown top-right — String view, Piano roll, Tab, Notation, or Notation + Tab together — or cycle views with the keyboard shortcut.

Adding a track is one button: ＋ Track in the toolbar, the ＋ at the top of the Tracks column, or Track ▸ New Track… — all open the same New Track dialog. Pick Audio (choose files; each becomes a studio track you can mix and pair) or MIDI / Transcription (pick the instrument, then Start empty to chart from scratch — no source file needed — or Import from a file for Guitar Pro / MIDI / MusicXML). An empty track lands selected and ready: double-click the chart to add notes, and save to commit.

The Tracks column down the left side lists every track — the master mix, any studio stems, and each transcription part — beside a matching timeline lane. From a track's row you can:

rename it (double-click the name, or right-click ▸ Rename),
reorder it or drop it into a folder by dragging (＋ Folder up top),
resize its lane by dragging the bottom edge (or the ＋ / − header buttons to grow/shrink them all),
pair a transcription with the studio stem it was charted against (the dropdown on its row), and mute / solo / set its level,
open it in its native editor (double-click), or right-click a stem to lock it as the metronome guide.

Drag the divider to widen the column; narrow it and the detail controls fold away first, keeping each track's name and type visible. Removing an audio track is non-destructive — the media stays in the pack and can come back. Shift+A jumps to this Tracks view.

Strings on fretted tracks

Guitar tracks support 6–8 strings, bass 4–6. The − / + buttons under the lowest string's label change the count in one click: + adds the next string the layout supports (guitar: low B, then low F#; bass: low B, then a high C), and existing notes keep their lanes and fret numbers — so converting a 4-string chart to use a real 5th string is +, then Ctrl+A, then ↓. − peels the last-added string back; if notes still live on it, the editor asks first and removes the string and those notes as one undoable step. Per-string tuning offsets — drop, open, re-entrant — live in Track ▸ Strings / tuning….

Hands on keyboard tracks

Keys notes can carry a left/right hand assignment — a MusicXML import brings the score's own hands in, and you can author them yourself:

Select notes, then Note ▸ Hand (keys) ▸ Left / Right / Clear.
Track ▸ Assign hands by split… stamps the whole part (or your selection) in one undoable step: pick a split note (like C4) — below it goes left, at or above goes right. Fix any crossings per-note afterwards; your per-note calls always win.
On the piano roll, hand shading (View ▸, on by default) draws LH notes warm and RH notes cool; unassigned notes keep their octave color.

Saved hands drive the grand-staff view's hand split — edit a hand and the notation follows on the next save.

6. Tempo mapping — line the grid up to the music

This is the heart of charting. The grid is beat-primary: a note remembers its bar-and-beat, and its clock time is derived from where the barlines sit. Move the barlines and every note rides along. The ruler is authoritative — you fit bars and beats to the fixed recording, never the other way around.

Three ways to set the tempo, from coarse to fine:

Sync tempo to audio (Tempo/Grid menu) — detects the recording's BPM and scales the whole grid to match in one step. A good first pass on a steady take.
Set a constant BPM — type into the BPM box for a song at one tempo. When an audio file's name carries the tempo (like -147bpm), Song Fit's Set constant tempo dialog pre-fills it for you — and a song created from such a file starts its grid at that BPM already.
Tempo Map mode (press T) — the precise tool. The bottom strip shows every barline; drag one onto its downbeat in the waveform and the surrounding bars re-space to fit. In this mode:
- G — Suggest fit: from the selected barline, the editor proposes downbeats from the audio's onsets — all the way to the end of the song. Where the audio stops corroborating, the remaining barlines continue as visibly low-confidence estimates (never committed on their own). Click a ghost handle to accept through it, or press Accept Whole Fit in the tempo toolbar to take the entire proposal as one undoable edit.
- H / Shift+H — walk the drifting bars: H jumps to the next bar Grid health says disagrees with the recording (Shift+H goes back), wrapping at the ends. Each landing arrives like clicking the grid pill — the bar scrolled into view with Suggest anchored on its downbeat — so refinement is fix, H, fix, H, done.
- Metronome guide: if your session includes a click/reference stem, open Audio tracks (the stem manager) and click the ♩ on that row to lock it as the tempo guide. G then analyzes the click instead of the mix — each click is one beat, so tempo changes in the click are followed directly. Click ♩ again to unlock. A stem named like a click track ("Click", "Metronome") gets this treatment automatically when no guide is locked — the status bar says so; lock ♩ to pin the choice, or lock any other source (the mix included) to override it.
- Shift+B — Tap tempo: tap along and the selected barline takes your tempo.
- B — Set BPM for the selected barline; M — metric modulation (e.g. half-time / double-time) at a barline.
- I — mark a barline at the cursor; Del — delete the selected one.
- Shift+T — time signature; N / [ / ] / D adjust the selected measure's beat count and unit.
- Beat-lock: lock a barline you've hand-verified so later automatic re-fits (Sync, Suggest, modulation) leave its time alone. Your manual edits are always kept — locking just protects a bar from the next auto-fit. Works in bulk: select many barlines (drag a marquee across the lane, Shift-click to extend, Ctrl/Cmd-click to toggle individual ones, Ctrl/Cmd+A for all) and the lock button / S key locks or unlocks the whole group as one undoable edit.

Offset (audio alignment)

The Offset box shifts the whole chart in time against the recording — use it when the notes are right relative to each other but the whole chart sits a few milliseconds early or late. It moves every track together and is undoable.

Sync, BPM-rescale, and Offset all move every track at once and can be undone — experiment freely.

7. Drums

Drum tracks use a piece-lane grid: rows are kit pieces (kick, snare, hats…), columns are grid positions. Click to place a hit; the drum pad strip maps a MIDI e-kit or your keyboard for monitoring. Row density (the Rows button, also in the Track menu) cycles Full / Compact / GM roll — GM roll lays the pieces out on their General-MIDI percussion notes, pitch-ordered like a piano roll, with each row labeled by its GM note number (the familiar DAW drum-roll layout). The drum limb lint flags hits that would need three hands — advisory only.

A song can hold several drum parts (a second drummer, an aux-percussion layer): with drums already present, ＋ Track ▸ Drums adds another, and a GP/MIDI drum import is added as a new Drums track instead of replacing. Each part is its own 🥁 entry in the part dropdown — pick one to open its grid — with its own Tracks row and mixer channel. All parts save with the song; the first part is the one the game plays today.

8. Structure — sections, phrases, anchors, handshapes, tones

Mark up the song so practice tools and the highway know what's happening:

Sections (Shift+M) — Verse / Chorus / Solo boundaries.
Phrases (Shift+P) — finer practice spans. Simplify (Alt+P) authors a lower difficulty tier for the phrase at the cursor — the editor derives the easier chart (legato chains dropped, bend/slide/tap ornaments stripped, dense chords thinned) that the in-game mastery slider serves.
Anchors (Shift+F) — hand-position anchors for fretted tracks; the fretboard strip and position resolver use them.
Handshapes (Ctrl+H) — chord shapes from the current selection.
Tone changes (Ctrl+Shift+T) — mark where the amp/tone should switch.

These live in the Add menu (Markers) and show in the inspector when selected.

9. Save and export — the finish line

Ctrl+S saves the editable .feedpak project. A new project asks for a name and location through the native file picker; later saves reuse that location. Opening an existing project and pressing Save updates it in place. Saving never publishes a library copy and never asks you to review export settings. In browsers without the native picker, Save downloads a copy but keeps the project marked unsaved because download completion cannot be verified; the desktop-native save contract is the durable path.
Export to Library (the toolbar button, or File ▸ Export to Library) assembles the current project through the host's core libraries and publishes a playable copy to your library. Exporting is separate from saving: it does not clear unsaved project changes. The exported pack carries every arrangement, the tempo map, sections and phrases, techniques, keys notation with its hand split, stems, tones, and art.

Ready to build? A quick pre-flight:

The grid follows the recording (§6) — the Map Health pill isn't complaining.
Guide claps (C) against the recording sound tight where it matters.
The lint flags you care about are addressed (they advise, never block).
Song details are filled (title, artist, art) — they're the library card.

Export again any time to refresh the library copy. For quick edits that do not need a new export, Save and close—the project remains editable and the library copy simply stays at its previous version.

Undo/redo is the safety net. Every edit — including tempo moves, offset, and imports — is undoable (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y). If something looks wrong, undo it.

10. Shortcut essentials

The full, profile-aware list is in the in-app shortcut panel (?). The ones you'll reach for constantly (FeedBack profile):

Key	Action	Key	Action
`Space`	Play / stop	`Ctrl+S`	Save
`?`	Shortcut panel	`Ctrl+K`	Command palette
`G`	Toggle snap	`,` / `.`	Snap resolution down / up
`F`	Edit fret	`0`–`9`	Set fret
`↑` / `↓`	Move string	`Shift+↑`/`↓`	Move, keep pitch
`Shift+R`	Resnap selection to grid	`Ctrl+D`	Duplicate selection
`T`	Tool palette (`T,T` = Tempo Map)	`W`	Show/hide waveform
`Alt+B`	Loop A/B (audio ↔ guide)	`Shift+L`	Follow playhead
`Shift+M`	Add section	`Shift+F`	Set anchor
`Shift+P`	Add phrase	`Alt+P`	Simplify the phrase at the cursor

Getting help

? — shortcut panel (searchable, follows your profile).
Ctrl+K — command palette (run anything by name).
Help ▸ User Guide — this document, in-app.

Happy charting.

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USER-GUIDE.md

USER-GUIDE.md

Song Editor — User Guide

1. Start a project