The centre and right of the top bar control playback: play and pause, jump around the song, change the tempo without changing the pitch, and see exactly where you are. This page covers every control and the keyboard shortcuts for them.
IMAGE · play-transport.png · 1600 × 140 px · The full top bar with a song loaded and the tempo slowed to 80%: tempo with its arrows and % readout, key, volume knob, playback buttons, scrub bar, bar counter, time signature, metronome and MIDI indicator.
Playback buttons
Button | Shortcut | What it does |
Play / Pause |
| Starts or pauses playback |
Stop (keyboard only) |
| Stops and returns to the start. There is no Stop button; Go to start does the same with the mouse. If a floating window or Presentation Mode is open, |
Go to start / Go to end | Jumps to the first or last note | |
Rewind / Forward | Jumps 5 seconds back or ahead, also while playing | |
Loop | Loops the whole song, or the selected passage. See Loop a passage. | |
Scrub bar | Drag to jump to any point in the song |
Change the tempo
The BPM readout shows the song’s current tempo. Slowing down doesn’t lower the pitch, so a passage at 60% sounds like the same music, just slower.
Many songs change tempo along the way. The BPM readout follows those changes as the song plays, and your speed setting scales all of them evenly. Tempo changes combine freely with looping and key changes; none of them resets the others.
If the bar lines, the metronome or the BPM readout don’t match what you hear, the song’s file carries the wrong tempo. Fix it with Tap Tempo, which adds a red TAP pad next to the BPM box. Turn on Tempo warnings and Orfeo points these songs out for you.
Tempo changes last for the session. To keep one in the file, save it through the Playback Editor.
See where you are
Readout | Shows |
Bar counter | The current bar and the total number of bars, matching the bar numbers on the piano roll |
Time signature | Beats per bar and the note value that counts as one beat, for example 3/4 |
Position | Time in the song. Turn on Show precise scrub time in |
Volume and metronome
Use case: learn a fast run
Loop the bar, drop to 60% and play it until it’s clean. Then step the tempo back up a few beats at a time with the ▲ arrow until you’re at full speed. The full recipe is in Learn a fast run.