Practice Assistant for Windows - Main Screen

The Main Screen of the Practice Assistant contains all the controls you need for a typical practice session. You select a book from the list box at the bottom of the screen. Then you select the study number from the array of buttons near the top. When you start playback, the selected piece is played accoording to instructions previously stored in the Segment_Table.

Playback controls include:

Play

Begins playback at the beginning of the first selected segment. The tempo is taken from the segment table.

Pause

Playback is paused at the current position. While paused, you may adjust the tempo or use the tuning controls. When Pause is pressed again, playback continues where you left off, using the tempo currently set in the Tempo display.

Stop

Playback is stopped. The display counters are returned to the beginning of the first selected segment.

Restart segment

A single click on this control will cause playback to jump immediately to the beginning of the segment currently playing. A double click on this control will cause playback to jump immediately to the beginning of the previous segment. In either case, the repeat counter is reset to 1.

Skip to next segment

This control causes playback to jump immediately to the beginning of the next selected segment.

Start/Stop metronome

The metronome can be turned on or off at any time during playback. A configuration option is provided so you can set the metronome instrument to any of the 47 instruments of the General MIDI drum kit.

Set tempo

This control allows you to change the tempo at any time during playback. Once you change the tempo using this control, the new tempo will override the tempo settings in the segment table for the remainder of the current playback. If playback is stopped, the tempo setting is returned to the value in the segment table. If you want your new tempo to be used the next time you play the piece, you must go to the Segment Screen and change the tempo settings for the appropriate segments.

Slow tempo button

This button will immediately reduce the tempo by the factor shown on the button face. The default is "0.50" (half tempo), but you can set this value as low as "0.10" (one tenth tempo).

Fast tempo button

This button will immediately increase the tempo by the factor shown on the button face. The default is "2.0" (double tempo), but you can set this value as high as "4.0" (four times the tempo).

Tuning Pitches

These controls are used to play steady tones for tuning each of the open strings.

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