DocumentationPlayback, Mixer & Piano Roll

Playback, Mixer & Piano Roll

Playback is available throughout the editor. The Play activity adds the mixer, sound assignment, and spatial stage; Roll provides a performance visualization of the same playback timeline.

Transport

Press Space to play or pause. Playback begins at the current selection when one is available, otherwise at the start of the score. Use the transport bar to seek, control following, and monitor the playhead.

Playback follows tempo, dynamics, articulations, repeats, and the document's sound assignments. Unpitched percussion uses its instrument's percussion map.

Mixer

The mixer has one channel for each instrument, plus a derived Chords channel when the document contains chord symbols. Use instrument channels to adjust:

  • output level;
  • mute and solo state;
  • stereo position;
  • reverb send;
  • the sound source assigned to the instrument.

Mute and solo remain active when you switch away from Play because they belong to the playback engine, not just the visible mixer.

Chords channel

Chords starts unmuted and plays the document-wide progression through a SoundFont piano (General MIDI program 0) in both browser and desktop playback. It is a playback channel, not an added instrument or a notated piano part, and does not use an instrument-profile sound assignment.

Its fixed voicing places one root or slash bass in MIDI notes 36–47 and all chord tones, including the root, in MIDI notes 60–71, sorted from low to high without duplicates. A slash bass that is not a chord tone sounds only in the low register. Unsupported symbols and no-chord changes produce no notes but end the preceding harmony.

Clicking a supported chord symbol or committing a chord edit auditions the same voicing for 400 ms while transport is stopped, respecting effective mute, solo, and level settings.

Full-score playback and instrumental-part views include chords even when the symbols are visually hidden. An explicit selection includes chords only if it covers every instrument visible in the current view; partial selections exclude them and an explicitly empty selection plays nothing. This temporary playback filter does not change saved mixer controls. See Chord Symbols for entry and visibility.

Sound assignments

Open a channel's sound picker to choose the playback source for that instrument. Browser playback uses the available sampler and SoundFont sources. Instrument profiles keep sound assignments associated with the document.

Spatial stage

The center of Play shows the ensemble on a stage. Drag instruments to change their stereo and depth placement. Viritura seeds conventional orchestral positions, but the arrangement can be customized and is stored with the document.

Repeated or layered instruments may appear as grouped or child sources so the spatial view matches what the audio engine is actually rendering.

Piano Roll

The Roll activity is a read-only falling-note visualization: notes approach a full piano keyboard while sounding keys light in their instrument-family colors.

Roll uses the same transport and playback timeline as the notation view. It is useful for checking register, density, entrances, and harmonic motion, but note editing is not currently wired from the piano roll. Make changes in Write.

For score navigation and playback following, see Viewing & Review. For percussion sound assignments, see Scores, Parts & Layouts.