Bank Buttons

Each PianoStudio song has five banks of buttons (although you don't have to use them all). Each bank has its own layout of up to 40 Note and Phrase Buttons. There are 10 button layouts to choose from, including one that has a "live" piano keyboard.

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You set a bank's layout, and its other features, using the Bank Button Editor panel. You can bring this up the same way you bring up the Note and Phrase Button Editor panels: select "Editor" from the Main Menu. When you tap a Bank Button, either before or after selecting "Editor," the Bank Button Editor panel will slide in from above and settle right below the Bank Buttons, and the selected Bank Button will be highlighted in yellow. You can tap any other Bank, Note, or Phrase Buttons and the appropriate editor will appear for that button.

There are five controls on the Bank Button Editor panel. These are discussed below, as is how to reorder the banks.

Naming Banks

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On the far left of the Bank Button Editor panel is a Bank Title box. By default, the banks are just named with the numbers one to five. After selecting a bank to edit, tap this field and a text keyboard will appear. Type in a custom name for the selected bank then press "Done" in the bottom-right corner to finish renaming and close the keyboard.

Help Button

The "Help" button brings up this built-in Bank Editing help chapter.

Bank Layout

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To the right of the "Help" button is a button that is a minature image of the bank's current button layout. Tapping this reveals the Bank Layout panel which slides down into view. The current Bank Layout is highlighted in yellow. Tap any of the 10 layouts to select it. The Bank Layout panel will close and the new layout will immediately be used for the bank's buttons.

Usually you will want to select a layout before editing the bank's buttons, since changing a bank's layout causes its buttons to be rearranged. When that occurs, PianoStudio tries to keep the center-most buttons in the center of the new layout. If the new layout has more buttons than the original layout, this is quite safe, although you may need to rearrange the buttons. But if you are changing to a layout with fewer buttons, be aware that any buttons on the edge of your layout (especially the right and bottoms edges) may end up hidden. You can always reselect the larger layout to reveal them, but it is usually easier to move the buttons towards the middle of the original layout first.

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There is one special layout that includes a "live" piano keyboard and six Note or Phrase Buttons. The keyboard shows one octave of notes. It also has a small 88-note view with the current octave highlighted, octave up/down arrows, and a screen-wide scroll strip. You can use this layout to play notes freely along with some other buttons.

Bank Actions

The button with a gear on it in the Bank Button Editor panel is for bank actions. If you tap it, a drop-down menu appears showing three options: Clear, Copy, and Paste. "Paste" is disabled until a bank has been copied.

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If you press "Clear," an Alert will appear asking you to confirm that you want to clear all the buttons in the bank. If you tap "Yes" then all the buttons will be turned into empty Note Buttons with the default color.

If you press "Copy," the currently selected Bank Button will briefly flash in white to shown that it has been copied. You can now select another bank in this song, or in another song, and perform a "Paste" action and the entire copied bank will be pasted into the selected bank.

Default Color

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All buttons in the bank will use the Default Color until they are individually assigned in the Note or Phrase Button Editor. This helps to visually identify which bank is currently selected, or buttons that are not yet programmed. If a bank has not yet been assigned a Default Color, then the song's Default Color is used (as selected on the "General" tab of the Settings chapter. Tapping the panel's Default Color button reveals a pallet of color choices. Choosing the "X" option at the lower left will hide all buttons in the bank that have not been individually configured with a color. This "invisible" color is useful for clearing unwanted buttons from your layout.

Bank Reordering

The final function of the Bank Button Editor is bank reordering. When the Bank Button Editor is visible you can drag any of the bank buttons left or right to change their order along the top of the screen.