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Auto-scroll

The score turns its own pages in time with the music.

What it does

With Auto-scroll on, the score follows the song: pages turn on their own, a touch ahead of the music, the way you actually read. It works in every display mode, it never turns backward on its own, and on a Synced score, repeats jump back right on time.

Turning it on

A backing track enables Auto-scroll: an audio file or a YouTube video under your chart. The toggle lives with the page controls; without a backing track it waits, and adding one is the whole setup.

The Sync badge

Next to the track chip, the badge tells you where the score stands:

• ·Synced — the score follows bar for bar, repeats included.
• ·Syncing… — Afinar is learning the song. This happens on its own.
• ·Not synced — the pages still follow the music, approximately. Syncing is what earns bar-accuracy.

How a score becomes Synced

• ·Guitar Pro files arrive already synced. If the song you’re learning exists as a .gp file, that’s the fastest path: bring it in and play.
• ·A chart with an audio file usually syncs itself. The work starts the moment you add the score or the track; by the time you’re ready to play, the badge has an answer.
• ·A chart with a YouTube link gets the audio out of the video first — Get the audio from this video, on the recording’s name in the bar. Afinar plays it through once at normal speed and keeps what it hears. After that the score has its own recording, and it syncs the way any recording does.

Sync the scroll by hand

Some scores can’t sync themselves, and a PDF never does. Sync the scroll by hand instead: open Manually sync the scroll… from the play menu. The score goes to the top, the recording rewinds, and the bottom of the window becomes one row that says SYNCING. Play the song and scroll to keep your place near the centre — arrow keys and a page pedal count as your hand too. It ends when the song ends, or when you press Finish.

It is one pass, all of it or none of it. Leaving any other way — Escape, closing it, going home, swapping the recording, starting a take — throws that pass away and says so. If the pass doesn’t cover enough of the score, Afinar keeps nothing and tells you plainly; the one next move is to play it again. When it works, the score follows from then on. You can do it again later with Sync the scroll again… in the same menu.

When a score and a recording don’t match

Afinar isn’t reading the music. It listens to the recording, works out where the beats fall, and lines that up against the bars printed on the score. When the two describe the same performance, that works. When they don’t, nothing can make them line up — and that is the honest limit of it.

Some pairings will never match, however long you wait. The recording is a different arrangement — a live take, a cover, a version with a longer intro. The score is a simplified or transposed edition of what you’re hearing. Or your part rests through the opening, so there is nothing printed where the music starts.

Three things can happen, and it is worth knowing all three.

It matches. The score follows, bar for bar, and you never think about it again.

It can’t match, and says so. Nothing is broken and you have not done anything wrong. Sync the scroll by hand once and it follows from then on.

It matches badly and doesn’t know. The badge says Synced and the score drifts anyway. Nothing warns you about this one — you will see it yourself, the score running ahead of the music or falling behind it.

If that third one happens you are not stuck. Open Setup and choose Sync the scroll yourself instead…. Playing the song through by hand overrides what Afinar worked out, and the score follows your timing from then on. If you change your mind, Use Afinar’s own timing appears in the same panel and puts it back — your pass is kept either way, so nothing you played is thrown away.

While the music plays

Scroll wherever you like, Auto-scroll never fights your reading. Look ahead, check an earlier system; a couple of seconds after you stop, the score glides back to the music. To pull the score to the music now, click the bar that’s sounding, that’s “this bar plays now”, or press your pedal.