BandInPad help

Multitrack playback for live bands. Your stems, your click, your markers, each row going out where you want it. Built on stage, for stage.

This is the same help text that is inside the app, where it works with no internet connection. It is here as well so you can read it before you buy, and on a bigger screen.

What BandInPad does

You bring the separate tracks of a song - drums, bass, keys, horns, a guide vocal, and the click. BandInPad plays them together, in time, and sends each one where it belongs: everything in stereo to the speakers, or every row to its own output on your audio interface, so the sound engineer has them apart.

While it plays you can:

• change the tempo and the key, live, with one finger
• jump to any section of the song, in time, with markers
• loop a section for as long as the singer wants it
• have the words and the chords run in front of you, line by line
• send the words and the chords to the whole band's tablets

Three words you will meet everywhere in the app:

• SETLIST - the running order for one evening. You can keep several.
• SONG - one item in that running order. It can be a single piece or a whole medley.
• SQUARE - one part inside a song. A single piece is a song with one square.

What you bring, and what the app brings

THE APP DOES NOT COME WITH A CLICK, AND IT DOES NOT COME WITH A GUIDE VOCAL.

Those two are tracks like any other, and they are yours. They have to sit inside the song's own folder, next to the rest of the stems. The app does not make them up, does not sing, and does not count for you out of nothing.

Why the click matters more than the rest

The tempo is READ FROM YOUR CLICK TRACK. That is where the app learns how fast the song goes and where the bar lines fall. No click, no tempo - and everything that sits on bars has nothing to sit on:

• markers, and JUMP between them
• loop on a section
• the tempo - / + (the number on screen moves, the sound does NOT)
• XFADE between songs (it needs 2 whole bars)
• words and chords (each line sits on a bar)
• the MIDI clock going to the keyboards is not the song's tempo

What still works with no click: play, pause, stop; the whole mixer - volume, pan, mute, solo, automation; the key ♭ 0 ♯; and all the outputs, as you set them.

The app says so first, in a red "NO CLICK TRACK" window, and then lets you play anyway - sometimes that is all you have. Just know that from there on it is not running the way it was built.

To put it right: "Edit song" → put the click file on the Click row → "Read tempo from click".

How the app knows which file is the click and which is the guide

By the row's KIND (Click, Vocal guide), and by its NAME. A file or a row called "click", "clic" or "metronom" counts as the click; "guide", "gv" or "vg" counts as the guide vocal. That is also what the CLICK and GUIDE buttons on the top bar switch off - your own tracks, not something the app added.

One exception, and only one: if the Click row is left EMPTY and the tempo is already known, the app beats a plain click from that tempo, so you are not left without one. Put a file on the Click row and the file is what you hear.

The screen

THE BAR ACROSS THE TOP holds its buttons in groups, on purpose: what you press while the song is playing sits together, on the left.

• WHAT YOU PRESS ON STAGE: the beat 1 lamp, PLAY, PAUSE, STOP, the tempo (the number plus BPM), the key (♭ 0 ♯), and LOCK. Tapping the tempo number puts it back to the song's own tempo; tapping the key number puts it back to 0. A yellow PAUSE means the sound is standing still and will carry on from the same spot.
• WHAT YOU SET BEFORE YOU START: CLICK, GUIDE, AUTO (AUTO runs the volume and pan moves you wrote in).
• WHAT YOU SEE, on the computer only: TEXT and MIXER.
• TOOLS: SETUP (the cog, it opens on "Rows") and PANIC (the red round one, held down for a second).

ON THE COMPUTER, down the screen:

• the TEXT drawer, when it is open, right under its own button
• the bar ruler, always there, with your markers on it, LOOP and JUMP in its head
• on the left, your setlists with the songs inside them
• in the middle, the squares of the song that is open. Above them: its name, its key, its BPM and an "Edit song" button
• under the squares, the mixer: one strip for each row, MASTER on the right

ON THE TABLET the same things are laid out for fingers. The setlists lie flat across the top, above the squares, and TEXT, BARS and MIXER are three buttons on the right of the song name, above the squares. Their drawers open underneath.

Which drawers go together

• BARS goes with anything. It never closes another drawer.
• TEXT and MIXER do NOT go together: opening one closes the other. When you want to read the words you are not setting levels, and the mixer would be pushed off the bottom of the screen anyway.

ANYTHING THE APP NEEDS TO TELL YOU appears as a line at the very bottom of the screen: an output that went missing, a tablet running an older version of Mirror, a file it could not find. Never a popup in the middle of a song.

Songs and setlists

A SETLIST is a running order. You can keep as many as you like - one per band, one per evening, one for rehearsals. They live on the left of the main screen, and in SETUP > Setlists.

Putting a song in

• "New setlist" makes an empty one.
• Press the small "+" on a setlist's row and pick the FOLDER with that song's stems. On the computer a zip works too; on the tablet it has to be a folder. The folder can live anywhere: internal disk, USB stick, SSD.
• On an empty screen the same thing sits in the middle, as "+ Add song".

A song shows where its audio is: on the drive, in the app, or not found right now when the disk it came from is not connected.

• IN APP copies the stems inside the app. After that this machine plays the song with no drive connected. It takes longer once, and it costs space.
• "Keep the song, free the app copy" sends it back to playing from the drive.

Each song's own menu

Hold your finger on a song to open it (right-click on the computer):

• "Edit (name, key, tempo, tracks)" - the same window as the "Edit song" button above the squares
• Move one place earlier / Move one place later
• Bring the stems into the app
• "Export this song…" / "Export this song with audio…"
• "DELETE (off the list, and the copy in the app goes too)". Your own files on the drive are never touched.

Two buttons under the "setlists" title

• MOVE swaps two songs inside one setlist: press MOVE, press one song, press the other. The numbers stay where they are. Swapping stays inside one setlist.
• XFADE on: press another song while one is playing and it hands over by itself - the playing song moves to the new tempo over 2 bars, fades out, and the new one comes in right on beat 1, at its own tempo. The pulse does not break. It needs 2 whole bars before the end of the square that is playing; if they are not there, the song you pressed simply waits for STOP, and the log says so. XFADE off: the song you press waits for STOP, the way it always did.

What belongs to the setlist, and what to the song

Each setlist keeps its OWN settings: volumes, pans, mutes, markers with their tempo and key, words and chords. The same song put in two setlists can be set up two different ways, and changing one does not touch the other.

The audio is NOT copied twice. A song that lives in two setlists plays from the same files on disk, so a second setlist costs no space. That is also why taking a song out of one setlist leaves the other one playing.

Carrying your work to another machine

A whole setlist:

• "Export setlist…" writes a small file: the settings, not the audio. Good as a backup, or for a machine that already has the same stems on the same disk.
• "Export setlist with audio…" writes a whole "…bandinpadset" FOLDER: the settings, the stems, and a check list with every file and what it weighs. Carry the folder over, press "Import…" there and choose it. The stems come inside the app, so the other machine needs no drive.
• "Import…" takes both: the whole folder, or the small settings file.

ONE SONG ON ITS OWN: right-click a song in the list and choose "Export this song…" (settings) or "Export this song with audio…" (a folder with its stems). Import it the same way; it asks WHICH setlist it goes in, and it comes in with everything of its own - markers with their tempo and key, the mix, the master, the words and the chords.

Other buttons on a setlist's row: "Rename", "Duplicate" (same audio, its own settings), "Delete" (the list and its settings go; the audio files stay on disk).

"Clean up", at the bottom of the chapter, shows audio sitting in the app that no setlist uses any more, and gives you the space back.

Markers, jump, loop and lock

A MARKER is a spot in the song, always on a bar line. Bar 1 is the very start. Tap a marker to start from there.

They live on the BAR RULER: on the computer it is always on screen, on the tablet it is the BARS drawer. Each marker is a plate on the ruler.

In the head of the ruler

• "+ Marker" drops one where the song is now, and asks for its name straight away, while you still know what is there.
• "Edit" opens the table: Name / Bar / Time / Tempo / Key, with "+ Marker", "Save", "Delete" and "Done".
• JUMP says WHEN a tapped marker takes effect: "On beat 1" (B1), "Instantly" (now), or "At the end" (end).
• LOOP repeats the section the song is in RIGHT NOW, from one press. If the singer wants the chorus once more, press LOOP while the chorus plays: nothing jumps, the song carries on, and at the end of the chorus it comes back round. Press it again and the song goes on its way.
• The bar number the song is at now.

ON A MARKER PLATE (hold it, or right-click): "Rename", "Start from here", "Loop this section" / "Stop looping", "Delete" - and "Clear mix" as well, on a marker that remembers a balance.

Tempo and key on a marker: lock

Each marker can remember its own tempo and its own key. LOCK on the top bar is what makes them take: with LOCK on, arriving at that marker sets the tempo and the key written on it.

The lock also remembers WHO IS HEARD. With LOCK on, the M and S buttons on the mixer are written onto the marker you are sitting on, not onto the song's own balance. A marker with nothing written brings the whole band back. MIX lights up on a marker that remembers a balance; tap MIX to clear that marker.

The words and the chords

One list: the words, with the chords sitting on their syllables. Each line sits on a bar, and the drawer shows it when the song reaches that bar. Nobody scrolls - the music moves the line.

THE DRAWER (the TEXT button)

• PLACE LINE: press it the moment the next line starts, and the bar is written for you. The drawer keeps count: how many are left to place, how many came from the sheet, and when all of them are placed.
• "Write" opens the box where the text is typed.

The "write" box

• "Paste the text": paste the whole song. Lines that are only chords are left out, and you are told how many - the chords belong on the syllables, and "The collage sheet" above puts them there for you. "Add these lines", "Replace everything", or "Add the n left out too" if you want them exactly as you wrote them, with no filtering.
• "Open a file…" reads the words out of a file instead of pasting them.
• "The lines" is the table: Bar / Line / Who sings. Bar 0 means not placed yet. "+ Line" adds one. On a row: its colour, an empty line underneath, move up, move down, delete.
• "Singers" is who sings which line.
• "Put the chords…": touch a syllable in the line, then press the chord. No brackets, no codes. There is Undo and Redo.
• "Save the words" writes the box back into the sheet, exactly as you see it.
• "Clear the bars" keeps the text and forgets the bars, so you can place them again. "Delete all lines" and "Clear the sheet" empty it.

Rows, the mixer and the outputs

A ROW is a mixer channel: drums, bass, keys, click, guide. Each file plays on its row and goes out on that row's output. Files with no matching row get one of their own when the song is added.

Setup > rows

The table: Name / Kind / Colour / Channels / Output, with "+ New row", up, down and "Delete" on each row.

• KIND decides how the row behaves: "Track" stretches with the tempo and transposes; "Drums/perc" stretches but does NOT transpose; "Vocal guide" stretches and does not transpose; "Click" is the click row.
• CHANNELS: Mono or Stereo.
• OUTPUT: which pair of outputs on your interface the row leaves on.

Rows are saved on purpose, not as you type: "Save rows" / "Undo changes", and while they are not saved the screen says so.

Setup > sound & outputs

• "Stereo (speakers, headphones)" - everything mixed to one pair.
• "Multitrack (audio interface, mixer)" - every row on its own output.
• "Device": "System output", or your interface, with how many outputs it has. "Look again" if you plugged something in just now.

The mixer itself

One strip per row, standing up like a real desk: the name, the output or the kind, the pan line above, the fader, the level LEDs, and M (mute) and S (solo). MASTER is on the right. AUTO on the top bar runs the volume and pan moves you wrote in; with AUTO off the faders stay where you put them.

The band's tablets: Mirror

BandInPad Mirror is the free app on the band's own tablets. It shows the words and the chord sheet, following this machine. The MIRROR button sits in the TEXT drawer, next to PLACE LINE and "Write": press it to go on the air, and on their side they press "Join". SETUP > Network shows who is connected.

Nothing written leaves this machine twice: the sheet goes out once, the key goes out as a number, and each tablet writes the chords itself. That is why every player picks their own notation on their own tablet, under Settings > "How the chords are written": A Am, H (H is B, B is Bb), or La m. It changes nothing in the song and nobody else sees it.

It also reads what you wrote. A sheet typed in Latin names ("La m Do Sol") is understood as chords, so a player set to A Am sees Am C G, and one set to La m sees it the way you typed it. What you wrote in your own sheet is never changed.

Mirror has no controls. It cannot start, stop or change anything here.

If a tablet has an older version of Mirror, the orange line at the bottom of the screen says so.

The keyboards: midi clock

What BandInPad sends to external keyboards is the MIDI CLOCK - the pulse, so they hold the song's tempo.

SETUP > Keyboards: "MIDI clock goes to" - either "Every MIDI output (as before)", or the outputs you tick one by one. "Look again" rereads the list after you plug a cable in.

With no click there is no tempo to send, so the clock going out is not the song's tempo.

When something is wrong

THE LINE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN is where the app talks: a missing output, a file it could not find, a tablet on an old version of Mirror.

PANIC (the red round button) rebuilds the sound and carries on from the same spot. It only works HELD DOWN for a second, so an accidental touch on stage does nothing. Rebuilding leaves a gap of about four tenths of a second in the music, so it is there for the case nothing else catches: the engine is running but the sound reaches nowhere, because somebody pulled the wrong plug.

"NO CLICK TRACK" in red means what chapter 2 says: the song will play, but there is no tempo and nothing that sits on bars will work.

THE LOG. Everything the app does is written down: what played, what was pressed, what went wrong. When something behaves oddly the answer is almost always in there. SETUP > About > "Show the log file in Finder" on the computer; on the tablet it sits in Files > On My iPad > BandInPad.

SETUP > Look has the theme and two ways of showing what a row is doing: "Level LEDs" (a ladder of ten steps next to each fader, read like a mixer - green up to -9 dB, yellow on the last few, red only at 0 dB, with the peak held on top for 1.5 seconds) and "Track lights" (one light: grey silent, green playing, red at 0 dB). Both are built to cost the tablet almost nothing. Switch them off and the app is exactly as it was before.

SETUP > About has the version.

Still stuck

Write to contact@bandin.ro or send a message on WhatsApp. A musician reads it, not a ticket system.