Capo 4.7 is Here
• Chris Liscio
Today I am pleased to share that Capo 4.7 is now available:
- Get Capo 4.7 for macOS on the App Store
- Get Capo 4.7 for iOS on the App Store
Lead Sheets
The biggest feature of this release is exclusive to the Mac. Capo can now produce publication-quality printouts or PDF files using the chords and sections that you set up in the project.
You can try this out today if you have an active subscription. Just choose File > Print… from the main menu once your song is ready to go. Then, add a title and subheadings, decide whether you want to include the chord vocabulary, and the rest works just like any other Mac app.
Call & Response Mode
Inspired by my research, Capo now provides a new way to play your looping regions: alternating between the recording, and playing quietly. To enable this mode, you long-press on the loop button while a region is selected. You can also make the quiet part play as loudly as 50% of the original volume, in case you find that helpful.
This mode is helpful in a number of ways:
- If you just listen in this mode, you can use the (totally) quiet period as an opportunity to hear it again in your head. This musical imagery exercise helps you build your memory of the melody/solo that you're trying to copy from the recording.
- While practicing, you can test your sense of time against the original. If you can play the notes yourself during the quiet period, you know you are able to play it at the current tempo.
- When you play the part yourself during the quiet period, you're comparing what you hear against your memory rather than the recording—this is much less distracting than trying to listen for the recording at the same time you're listening to your own playing.
- On the Mac, you can use this mode in the Tabbing song view to confirm your note entries. The Call & Response settings let you configure the note entries to play during the quiet period so that you can confirm your entries against your memory of the notes you're trying to copy.
I wrote a bit more about this in my last blog post, where you can learn more about the rationale behind this feature.
I've been playing with this new mode for the past few weeks while testing the update, and I think you're going to love how well it works.
Fixes and Improvements
There is a lot of stuff that goes into the "miscellaneous bin" for this update. Some of these are fixes for issues I found while building the new features, and some can be tied directly to user feedback that I received during the same time. I'm always thankful to those of you who reach out to let me know about the sharp edges that need attention.
You can learn more about what changed by reading the What's New pages for each platform:
User Guide Changes
One big item on this list is a totally new User Guide that now covers both platforms in the same place. But it's also searchable, and I'm trying to be mindful about where I put different kinds of content.1
I really wanted the user guide to be "more finished" than it is right now, but I really needed to get this release out the door before WWDC hijacks all my focus for a week or so. I'm going to keep plugging away at it, and I would like to hear your feedback about the guide.