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F.A.Q.

PIANO KEYBOARD
Drag the full 88-key scrolling keyboard left or right while you play. Touch the scroll bar below the keys to drag without playing or to hold the keyboard in place while you play. Middle C is marked with our miniMusic logo; the other octaves are marked by small dots below the other C-keys.

MASTER VOLUME
The master volume control is in the top left corner. Slide it up to make the audio louder, or down to make it softer. The maximum volume is determined by the volume controls on your iPhone or iPod (either the hardware volume controls, or the software volume setting). An "auto-gain" feature will sometimes adjust the volume automatically to prevent clipping of the audio when playing several notes at once.

INSTRUMENT BANK
The instrument bank is centered above the keyboard. There are 8 pages of instrument icons and 10 instruments per page. Tap on an instrument to play using that sound, the icon will get bigger when selected. Slide the screen left or right to change pages. Double tap on an instrument icon to edit the sound.

CONTROL BUTTONS
There are 3 control buttons in the top right corner. The top button will enlarge the keyboard to the full height of the screen. The Help Button (the question mark) in the middle will display this help text. The Action button on the bottom will display a menu allowing you to create new instrument icons, copy/paste instrument definitions, or revert the current instrument sound to the last saved version (sounds are saved when you quit/close Pianofly).

Double tap on a sound icon to edit the sound. The edit screen (above) replaces the sound icons. To exit the sound edit screen, tap on the check mark in the top right corner.

NODES
The three icons next to the volume control are the three nodes available for this instrument. Each node can generate a frequency. Nodes have three states: on, off, and modulating.

	This node is on and making sound. The frequency it generates is being routed to the speaker or headphones.
	This node is off and is silent. Tap on the plus icon to turn it on.
	This node is modulating the node below it. You cannot hear the frequency it generates directly, but it causes a rich spectrum of "side band" frequencies to emerge from the next node. This is the essence of FM synthesis.

To connect a node to the next, so it will modulate, tap on the top node and drag down to the next. To disconnect, tap in the second node and drag up to the first. To turn the last node off, tap on it and drag to either side (left or right).

Each node is a different color to help you match each node with its envelope (see below).

WAVES

On the right side of each node is the sound wave it is generating. Use the handle (the colored boxes) on the right side of each wave to change its wavelength. Slide it left to make the wavelength shorter and the frequency higher. Slide it to the right to make the wavelength longer and the frequency lower.

When the handle is roughly in the center of the screen it will generate the frequency being played on the piano keyboard. You can go an octave lower or two octaves higher. These octave positions are marked by dark gray vertical guidelines (they are wide, the same width as the wave handles). If you double tap on the sliding handle, it will snap to the nearest octave.

Tap on the wave itself to change the type: sine wave, white noise, square wave, or saw tooth wave. A sine wave is the purest tone/frequency.

ENVELOPES

The envelope determines the shape of the sound while it is playing. There are four vertical sliders to adjust the envelope. The first half of the envelope is called the "attack": what happens when your finger first touches a key. It determines how quickly the sound gets loud, how loud it gets, and whether it stays that loud, or decays to a slightly lower volume.

The next part of the envelope is the "sustain": it determines the level of each node while you are holding a note. The sustain continues for as long as you hold the note.

The last part of the envelope is the "release": what happens when you lift your finger away from the key or move to a different key. Does the sound fade away immediately or does it linger or resonate for a while.

ATTACK
The first slider sets where the attack starts. If a node is on, you will usually want it to start at zero (the lowest position) unless you want to hear a click when it begins. You can start a modulating node higher without a click.

The second slider adjusts the shape of the attack. In addition to sliding up and down to set the level, you can also move the slider left or right to adjust the timing. The time scale grows exponentially from about a millisecond to about 3 seconds.

SUSTAIN
The third slider sets the sustain level, but it can also move left or right to further shape the timing of the attack. The length of the flat sustain line is unimportant; the level will hold as long as your finger is on the key.

RELEASE
The last slider sets the duration of the release. It always drops to zero, otherwise the sound might never end. The longer the release, the longer the note continues to play after you lift your finger. If you play a lot of notes quickly, there could be dozens of notes playing simultaneously which could overwhelm the computer processor, making Pianofly less responsive. If you create a sound with a long release, you should be careful how many notes are playing at once.