Hints and tips

Getting set up, and getting the most out of your practice. The same set-up guide is in the app too, under Help > Getting Started.

Getting set up

Connecting your instrument

For guitar, bass or violin, an audio interface gives the cleanest signal, but your computer's microphone works too if you play close to it in a quiet room. A MIDI keyboard plugs in by USB. Choose the input in Tools > Settings. Each instrument remembers its own input, so if you switch between, say, a guitar on your interface and a MIDI keyboard, choosing the instrument switches the input as well.

Setting the level

The meter in the status bar shows how loud your instrument is coming in. It has two markers: a note registers once the bar passes the first, and past the second, the sound is likely to distort. Aim to play between the two.

• Amber means too quiet: play a little harder, or turn up the gain on your interface or in your computer's sound settings.
• Red means too loud, or too much background noise: turn the gain down.

Keep quiet for a second

Each time Notabene3 starts listening, it spends about a second learning the background noise of your room: hum from an amp, a fan, the fridge. Keep your strings still while it does, or it may learn a ringing string as "noise" and then ignore that note. Before a scored session it does this again, and waits for quiet first ("Quiet please...").

Tune up first

Notabene3 judges notes to the nearest semitone, so a slightly out-of-tune string still counts, but it's easiest with an instrument in tune. Use the Tuner button.

Practising

Start with a small box

A box is the range of notes the questions come from. On guitar, a box of the first five frets on the top three strings is a gentle start; then move it up the neck, or add strings. On keyboard, start with an octave either side of middle C. Notabene3 suggests boxes for each instrument, and you can make your own.

Stay in one key for a while

Sticking with one key and scale until it's comfortable builds the link between the key signature and your fingers. Then move round the circle of fifths: G major after C, then D, adding one sharp at a time.

Why guitar music has an "8" under the clef

Guitar and bass are written an octave higher than they sound, so the notes sit on the staff rather than on a ladder of ledger lines. The small 8 under the clef says so. That's the usual convention, so it matches printed guitar music, but if you'd rather see the notes at the pitch they sound, turn it off in Tools > Settings.

Playing the same note twice

In scales and melodies, the same note sometimes comes twice in a row. Pick or pluck it again clearly and Notabene3 hears the new note. Letting it ring on doesn't count, as that's the same note still sounding.

Adding your own tunes

Melodies mode reads tunes written in ABC notation, a simple text format for music. Thousands of folk tunes are available in ABC on sites like thesession.org: copy the ABC, open Melodies..., choose New and paste it in. Notabene3 uses just the notes, not the rhythm, so you can take each tune at your own pace. To play a tune in a different key, make a copy of it in that key.

Ear training

If you're new to playing by ear, start with a small box and a pentatonic scale, as there are fewer notes to choose between. The answer is shown once you get it right, or, if you like, after a set number of wrong guesses.

If something isn't right

Notes aren't recognised, or the wrong note shows

• Check the level meter: most problems are a level that's too low or too high.
• Turn off any effects (distortion, chorus, delay) and use a clean sound. Distortion in particular adds frequencies that confuse pitch detection.
• With a microphone, play closer to it, and move away from noisy fans.
• On guitar, the neck pickup usually gives a clearer note than the bridge pickup.

Still having trouble? Turn on Help > Extra Diagnostic Logging, play the notes that cause the problem, then turn it off again. Notabene3 offers to save a copy of the log, which you can email to support@notabene3.com, saying which notes you played and what you saw. That helps us improve recognition for instruments and set-ups we don't have ourselves.

Linux: the window icon looks wrong in the title bar

On KDE Plasma with Wayland, a desktop bug can show the wrong icon in the window's title bar. Turning on XWayland in Tools > Settings (the Wayland tab) avoids it, and also lets Notabene3 remember where its window was. It takes effect when you restart Notabene3.