Merryn Music

How Merryn Music fits together

A practice room for a melody instrument — guitar, a G D A E four-string (mandolin or fiddle) or piano — with a backing band that plays under any tune in a book of some twenty-two thousand. There is one song and one band, and they live in the page rather than in a tab: the music keeps playing whichever tab you are in.

The transport. Play and pause (Space from any tab), stop, the song on the stand, the tempo, how it plays round, the count-in and the speed trainer.
What is on the stand, and what the band is played on. Tune or Lead trainer; Random tune; Listen, the microphone; and Synthesiser or Samples.
The playhead. The song’s bars in a row. Click or drag to a bar to go there.
The tabs, and at their right the workspace: everything in one file, and back again.
A tree, down the left of Backing Track and Synthesiser: pick what to change.
The room of the tab, showing only what was picked.

The song on the stand

Everything the band plays comes from one place: the stand in Play. Whatever is put there — a tune chosen in the Tune book, a tune being written in Write, or an exercise written for you by the lead trainer — Play turns into notes and hands to the band, which plays it through the synthesiser or the recorded samples. Backing Track says how the band plays it.

A first session

Open the Tune book, work down the tree on its left to a shelf — say Traditional, then Ireland, then Reels — and double-click a tune to hear it.
Press Play along. The tune goes on the stand, and Play shows it scrolling past with the fretboard, or written out as Sheet music.
Slow it down with the tempo on the transport, turn on Count-in, and play along. The Speed trainer adds a little tempo each time round.
Open Backing Track to change the style of the band, its drums, the key, or your instrument and level.
Press Listen to tune up, or to have your playing scored note by note.
Save workspace when you finish: your tunes, favourites, sounds and settings go into one file.

Random tune puts a tune at random from the Tune book’s current shelf on the stand and plays it from the top, from any tab. Play, its Sheet music and Write all change to it at once. With the lead trainer on the stand, it reads New melody and writes a new exercise.

The transport

Across the top of every tab. It plays whatever is on the stand in Play, and it goes on playing whichever tab you move to.

▶ / ❚❚	Play or pause. `Space` does the same from any tab, except while typing in a field.
■	Stop, and go back to the start of the song.
Tempo	The slider, or − and + for five beats a minute at a time. In a compound time (6/8, 9/8, 12/8) the beat is the dotted crotchet, ♩.
Loop	How the song plays round — see below.
Count-in	A bar of clicks before the music starts, so you come in on time.
Speed trainer	Four beats a minute faster each time the loop comes round, up to the level’s target tempo.
Tune \| Lead trainer	What is on the stand: a tune from the book, or exercises written for you over a chord progression.
Random tune	A tune at random from the Tune book’s shelf, played from the top; New melody on the lead trainer.
Listen	The microphone: notes, tuner, scoring and transcribing. More about Listen.
Synthesiser \| Samples	What the whole band is played on. Which to choose.

Loop, once through, endless

Endless is for the lead trainer’s exercises, which it goes on writing as you play; a tune has an end, so it loops or plays once through.

The playhead

Under the transport, the song’s bars in a row, with a fill up to where the music is. Click a bar to go there, or drag along it to find one; a label shows the bar under the pointer. Where a tune has parts (A, B…), the bar each starts on is marked with its letter. With the playhead focused, ← and → go a bar at a time, Page Up and Page Down four, and Home and End to the first and last. While Score my playing listens, each bar is tinted by how it went.

Synthesiser or samples

The switch at the end of the transport chooses what the whole band is played on. The tunes, the style and the mix are the same either way; only the sound changes, and how hard the computer works.

Synthesiser

Every note is built live from oscillators, filters and effects. Every part can be re-voiced, and each sound can be rebuilt from scratch.

The Synthesiser tab is on the strip: every part’s patch, and the part editor.
A Sound Library backing plays its beat hit by hit on the synthesiser’s drums.
Needs a reasonably quick computer.

Samples

Every note is a recording: a real grand piano, guitars, bass, organ, violin and recorded drum kits.

Backing Track › Instruments lists the recording each part is on.
A Sound Library backing can play its recorded drum loop.
Far lighter: a Chromebook or an older computer plays it without stuttering.

A recording is read the first time the song needs it, which can take a moment; the synthesiser fills in until it is ready. Switching back to the synthesiser lets the recordings go, and the memory with them.

Play

The song on the stand, in one of two views, chosen with Scrolling and Sheet music at the top left of the tab. The tab opens on whichever was used last.

Scrolling

The lead trainer’s stand. The song goes past as tab over notation, with the chord now and the next one above it and a strip of every bar’s chords. Under it, a fretboard shows where your fingers go — the note now, the next note, and the notes of the scale. Beside the fretboard, Frets show labels the dots with note names, degrees of the scale, fret numbers or plain dots, and Note spacing spreads the scrolling score out or packs it in. With the piano chosen, the fretboard is a keyboard (Piano practice hands).

Sheet music

The song written out to read, follow or print, tab above and notation below, with its chords over each line. A line walks across the page as the band plays it, and Follow the music scrolls each line into view. Click a bar to play from it. Bars per line fits the page or sets a number; Chords and Tab can be left out, and Print prints just the music. It changes the moment the song on the stand does — Random tune included.

Moving through the tunes

← and → step through the tunes on the Tune book’s shelf, or through the lead trainer’s exercises; N is a random tune or a new melody. The keys for Play are under Keys.

Write

The song on the stand, to change and keep — or a new one. A note changed here is heard the next time the band comes round to it.

The grid and the staff

Grid shows a few bars as steps: click a square to write a note there, click it again to take it out, and drag it to move it. The note length (1–8) is chosen above the grid. Staff shows the whole piece as sheet music, line after line with its chords over each line: click to write a note, drag one up, down or along, change its length, make it a rest, or sharpen, flatten or naturalise it. The bar tools — Empty this bar, Add a bar, Copy this bar, Remove this bar — act on the bar last clicked. ▶ From this bar plays from where you are editing.

The tune

Above the melody: its name, kind of tune, backing, key, mode, time signature and starting tempo. Change the key and the melody moves with it.

Keeping it

Save to my tunes keeps a book tune’s changes as a tune of your own and leaves the book’s alone; Save as a new tune makes another copy; New tune on the left starts one from nothing. What you save is in the Tune book under Your tunes. Export MIDI writes a Standard MIDI File with its band — melody, chords, bass and drums, as many times round as you ask.

Recording

Record counts you in from the bar you are on and writes what you play into the microphone straight onto the grid, to the nearest semiquaver, quaver or crotchet. Undo recording puts the bars back. (Listen › Transcribe.)

If another song goes on the stand — Random tune, say — while Write has changes not yet saved, Write asks before letting them go: keep this one on the stand, or open the new one.

Tune book

Every tune — some twenty-two thousand, and whatever you write — found by working down the tree on the left of the tab. The arrow beside a branch opens it; its name chooses it.

The shelves

Composers: By era — Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern — then composer.
Traditional: By part of the world, then country, then kind of tune (reels, jigs, hornpipes…) or the composer of the tune. The tunes whose country is not known are under Traditional, country not known, by kind.
Instruments: The pieces written for the guitar, the mandolin, the violin or the piano.
National anthems: Fourteen of them, from New Zealand’s to South Africa’s.
Favourites: Every tune you have starred.
Your tunes: What you have saved in Write.

Finding a tune

The list groups the shelf by first letter; click a letter to jump to it. The search box finds by name, composer or country, accents or not. Filters narrows further by country, composer, kind, time, key and mode, instrument and tempo. Star a tune (☆, or F) to keep it under Favourites.

Playing it

Double-click a tune, or press Enter or ▶ Play, to hear it there and then. Play along takes it to Play; Sheet music opens it written out; Edit a copy opens it in Write. Random tune (or R) picks one from the shelf. Whatever the book is narrowed to is the list that Play’s ← → and the transport’s Random tune work through.

Backing Track

How the song on the stand is played. Pick what to change in the tree down the left — opening a branch closes the others — and only that is shown on the right. On a narrow screen the tree folds into the bar at the top of the tab. What the tab offers follows the Synthesiser | Samples switch.

The band: Style, drums & tempo — the one place the backing is chosen, and its drums, time signature and tempo; Instruments — what each part is played on; Mix — the level of the guide melody, drums, bass, chords and click; Guide melody & click — the guide melody on or off, its tone, and a click all the way through.
You: Instrument & level — guitar, 4-string (G D A E, the mandolin’s tuning) or Piano practice hands, and the level of the exercises; Key & pitch — the key, transpose and the octave of the instrument; Scale & chords — for the lead trainer only, since a tune brings its own.

Style, drums & tempo

A backing is chosen in three steps. The genre and sub-genre only narrow the list; the type is what the band plays, and moving the genre or sub-genre goes straight to the first type in it that plays in this time signature.

A type written for another bar is shown dashed. A tune keeps its own time signature, so those are out of reach; on the lead trainer, choosing one moves the exercise into its time. Tempo shows the tempo now, and Play at … bpm, as it usually is puts the style’s own tempo back.

The drums: the beat and the kit

The drums are two things. The beat — what the drums play — comes with the style. The kit — what the drums sound like — is chosen under Instruments on samples, or in the Synthesiser tab. Changing the kit never changes the beat.

The two Sound Library genres — drummers (brushes in four, in three for waltzes and in six for jigs; swing, rock, shuffle, funk, neo-soul, old-school, vinyl breaks, metal and five-four) and electronic & world (techno, house, trance, drum & bass, dubstep, breaks, hip-hop, pop, Latin, bossa nova, reggae, African, world and ambient) — each hold a type for every recorded drum loop. On samples, Drums under the type chooses Recorded loop or Hit by hit on the kit. Each bar of the song plays a bar of the loop at the song’s tempo, and its drums keep their pitch however far that is from the loop’s own. On the synthesiser, the same types play their beat hit by hit.

Instruments

On samples, one row for each instrument the song uses, and only those: the melody (on the instrument you play), each chord instrument, the bass and the drum kit, each with the recording it is on. The drums are on the kit the style suggests — brushes for jazz, a funk kit for funk and disco… — or one you choose for every song. The song goes on playing while you choose, so each change is heard in the band; if nothing is playing, the new recording is played once on its own. On the synthesiser, this section points to the Synthesiser tab, where every part’s patch is chosen.

Synthesiser

On the strip while the band is on the synthesiser: what each part of the band is played on, and every sound rebuilt as you like it, while the song plays under it.

The band’s instruments: Every part the song plays and the patch it is on, the style’s kit first in each list. Edit opens a part in the editor; Put the whole band back returns every part to the style’s own. What you choose is kept for the sub-genre, so the techno snare and the jazz snare are chosen separately.
Edit a part: The melody, the bass, a chord instrument or a drum — those the song plays are marked with a dot. Choose another from its range, or build one oscillator by oscillator; choosing a part sets the song playing so that every change is heard in the band. An on-screen keyboard plays the part on its own.
The synthesiser: Modulation, the master effects, MIDI (a MIDI keyboard or controller, and MIDI files played on the band) and Record & export, which records what the synthesiser plays to a sound file.

Listen

The Listen button opens the microphone. It hears each note you play — its pitch, where it starts and how long it lasts — and does one of four things with it, chosen in the bar that opens under the playhead. It stays on whichever tab you are in; × or Listen again closes it. Headphones help, so it hears you and not the band.

The gate

Anything quieter than the Gate is taken as silence, so the room’s hum and hiss are never heard as notes. Set from the room listens for two seconds while you keep quiet and puts the gate just above what it heard.

The four things it does

Notes: Each note as you play it: its name, how many cents sharp or flat, how long you held it and, while the music plays, which beat it fell on and how early or late.
Tuner: A needle fifty cents either side of true, and the strings of your instrument — the one in Backing Track, or a violin, viola, cello, bass, ukulele or banjo — lit as each comes into tune. Click a string to hear it. A = 440 can be changed. The band stops while you tune.
Score my playing: Play along and each note is judged as its time passes: the right note or not (in any octave, if you ask), how far out of tune, how early or late, and whether it was held its length. The guide melody is muted so the microphone hears you. The playhead’s bars turn green, amber or rust by how they went, and Play colours each note on its score. green amber rust
Transcribe: Record into Write counts you in from the bar you are on and writes each note on Write’s grid as you play it, to the nearest semiquaver, quaver or crotchet. A click keeps time if the tune has no chords yet. Each bar you play through is written afresh, and Undo recording puts them back.

Latency

Between the sound leaving the speakers and your note reaching the microphone there is a delay no browser reports. If every note comes out late by about the same amount in Score my playing, that is it: Use my timing as the latency takes it off, once, for good.

Piano practice hands

In Backing Track, under You, Piano practice hands sets the app up for the piano.

Play shows a keyboard instead of the fretboard: the right hand’s note in green, the next one ringed, the left hand’s chord in blue. The score becomes a grand staff — the tune on the treble, the chords in close position on the bass — with a suggested finger for each note of the right hand between the two; choose Fingers beside the keyboard to see them on the keys too. The guide melody is played on a piano.

Right hand: You play the tune; the band plays the chords.
Left hand: The guide plays the tune while you play the chords.
Both hands: The tune and the chords are yours; the band keeps only the drums and bass.

Listen scores the tune, so with the piano it scores the right hand.

Playing the mandolin

The mandolin has eight strings in four pairs, called courses, tuned like a violin: G D A E, low to high. The two strings of a pair are tuned to the same note and are always fretted and picked together, as if they were one. Choose 4-string in Backing Track, under You, and the tab and fretboard in Play are drawn for it; the Tuner in Listen tunes it.

Each course is a pair of strings, fretted and picked as one. In first position one finger covers two frets; the numbers are the fingers of the left hand.

Holding it

Sitting: Sit forward on a chair without arms. Rest the mandolin on your right thigh, with its back against your stomach and the neck pointing up and out to the left at about 30–45°. Tilt the top back only a little, so you can just see the strings; tilting it right back bends your picking wrist. A strap helps, even sitting: it holds the mandolin so that neither hand has to.
Standing: Use a strap, set so the mandolin sits at the same height and angle as it does when you sit.
Anchor: The right forearm rests on the edge of the top, near the tailpiece, and that contact is what holds the instrument still. The left hand does not hold it up: if the mandolin slips when you take the left hand away, change the angle or the strap until it doesn’t.

The left hand

Thumb: The thumb goes behind the neck, roughly opposite the first or second finger. Some players, most of them in bluegrass, let the thumb come just over the top of the neck; that is fine, as long as you are not squeezing. The neck sits loosely where the index finger meets the palm, with a small gap between the neck and the palm.
Wrist and fingers: Keep the wrist straight or only slightly bent, and the fingers curved, so each one comes down on its tip and doesn’t touch the course next to it. Keep the fingernails short.
Fretting: Press both strings of the course just behind the fret, not on top of it and not midway between frets. Press only as hard as you need for a clean note; if a note buzzes, move your finger closer to the fret before you press harder.
Which finger: In first position one finger covers two frets: the first finger plays frets 1 and 2, the second finger frets 3 and 4, the third finger fret 5, and the fourth finger fret 7 (and fret 6). Use the fourth finger on fret 7 rather than the open string above it when you need to hold a note or slide into it.

First position: the note at each fret, and the finger that plays it. The frets between — 1, 3 and 6 — go to the finger of the fret above them.
Course	Open	Fret 2 · 1st	Fret 4 · 2nd	Fret 5 · 3rd	Fret 7 · 4th
E (highest)	E	F♯	G♯ (G at fret 3)	A	B
A	A	B	C♯ (C at fret 3)	D	E
D	D	E	F♯	G	A
G (lowest)	G	A	B	C	D

The right hand

The pick: Curl the index finger loosely and lay the pick on the side of its first joint, pointing straight out from the finger. Hold it there with the pad of the thumb, lying flat along the finger. Only a few millimetres of the tip should show. Hold it firmly enough that it doesn’t turn in your fingers, and no harder. A medium to heavy pick (about 1–1.5 mm) with a rounded tip gives the fullest tone on a mandolin.
Where to pick: Pick over the end of the fretboard or just behind it, towards the bridge, for a warm, round sound. Moving towards the bridge makes the sound brighter and thinner.
The motion: The stroke comes from the wrist, turning a little as if you were shaking water off your hand, with the forearm staying on its anchor. The elbow and shoulder hardly move. Keep the stroke small, so the pick moves just past the course and no further, and keep the pick tilted a little, so it passes through both strings of the course together.
The other fingers: Let the other fingers curl loosely or brush the top very lightly. Don’t plant them on the top: that locks the wrist and damps the sound.

Picking techniques

Alternate picking: Down on the beat, up on the half-beat between. For a line of quavers the pick goes down, up, down, up, and it keeps going through a rest or a long note without touching the strings, so the next note is still picked in the right direction. Practise it slowly with the click, then use the Speed trainer on the transport to raise the tempo a little each time the loop comes round.
Jigs: In 6/8, each group of three quavers is usually picked down, up, down — then down, up, down again — so the pick goes down at the start of every group and the jig keeps its lilt.
Tremolo: A held note on a mandolin dies away quickly, so a long note is sustained by picking it very fast, down and up. Start with measured semiquavers against the click and speed up gradually. Keep the wrist loose; tension makes the tremolo uneven and tires the arm.
Rest stroke: On a downstroke, let the pick come to rest against the next course down. It gives a stronger, fuller note for a melody, and is much used in classical playing.
Cross-picking: Rolling across three courses with a repeating pick pattern, such as down, down, up or down, up, up, so the notes ring into one another like a banjo roll. It is a bluegrass technique; learn the pattern slowly on open strings before fretting anything.
The chop: The mandolin’s rhythm part, on beats 2 and 4, like a snare. Hold a chord with no open strings, strike it sharply, and let the left-hand fingers ease off the strings straight away without leaving them, so the chord is cut short into a percussive “chop”.
Double stops: Two courses picked together, for harmony under a melody note. Fret both and let the pick go through the two courses in one stroke.
Slurs and slides: Only the first note is picked. For a hammer-on, bring a left-hand finger down hard on the next note; for a pull-off, flick the finger sideways off the string as you lift it; for a slide, keep pressing while you move the finger to the new fret.

Practise slowly enough that every note is clean, with the band or the click, and speed up only when it is easy. Tune before you play: the two strings of a pair slipping apart makes the mandolin sound out of tune even when every note is right.

Keys

Anywhere

`Space`	Play or pause	`?`	This page
`Alt` `1`–`6`	Go to a tab, in the order on the strip	`Ctrl`/`⌘` `S`	Save the workspace to a file

In Play

`↑` `↓`	Tempo ±5	`←` `→`	Previous / next exercise or tune
`N`	New melody, or a tune at random	`1`–`8`	Level
`G`	Guide melody on / off	`M`	Score my playing on / off
`L`	Loop / once / endless	`C`	Count-in on / off
`[` `]`	Octave down / up	`−` `=`	Transpose down / up
`S`	Sheet music view	`Esc`	Stop

In the Tune book

`R`	A random tune from the shelf	`F`	Star the tune as a favourite
`Enter`	Play the tune there and then

In Write

← →

The bars before and after

1–8

Note length

In Write, on the staff, with a note selected

`↑` `↓`	A step of the scale; with `Shift` a semitone, `Ctrl` an octave	`←` `→`	The note before or after
`Delete`	Take it out	`R`	Make it a rest (with none selected: write rests)

On the playhead, when it is focused

`←` `→`	A bar back or on	`Page Up` `Page Down`	Four bars
`Home` `End`	The first or last bar

Saving and privacy

Everything is made in the browser — synthesised, or played from the recordings in the data/samples/ folder — with no network and no account.

Kept as you go

Your tunes and every change saved to them, favourites, what is on the stand and how it is played, every part’s sound, the microphone’s settings and the lead trainer’s progress are kept in this browser as you go. They stay on this computer; clearing the browser’s site data clears them.

The workspace file

Save workspace, at the right of the tabs (or Ctrl/⌘ S), writes all of it to one file — along with a tune being written in Write that has changes not yet saved. Load workspace reads one back: it asks first, since it replaces everything here, then starts the app again on the tab that was open. Use it to move to another computer, or to keep a copy.

Where each recording came from, and its licence, is in data/samples/CREDITS.md.