Button Styles

PianoStudio lets you change how your buttons appear ... their "style." You can change a button's color, add arrow pointers, and even change the button's labels. These style elements can help you organize your song, making it easier, for example, to find the first chord of a song, to see which notes follow others, or to notate which buttons should be played together. This section describes how to make these button style changes.

The Button Style Editor

You edit a button's style using the Button Style Editor screen. You get there from either the Note Button Editor or from the Phrase Button Overview. Just tap the note or phrase button whose style you want to change (it will remain highlighted in orange), and then tap the rainbow-colored "Button Style" button at the lower left of the editor. The Button Style screen will appear with the current button's color and arrow pointers selected.

Button Colors

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You can color your buttons with any color from a palette of 23 colors. This palette is laid out in two rows in the upper part of the Button Style Editor. When the editor is open you can touch any note or phrase button and its color is immediately highlighted on the palette. To change its color, just tap the color you want. You can even run your finger over the palette and watch the selected button change color in response.

You can make a button "invisible" by choosing the icon with the red "X", located in the lower left position of the palette. Any "invisible" buttons can still be selected in the editor, but once you close the editor they cannot be selected and won't make any sound. There will just be a blank space in the grid where where each invisible button was.

You can use colors any way you wish: to show which buttons sound good together, to show button progressions, to express the mood of the song, or just in random fashion. The invisible color is particularly useful for hiding unused buttons, thus creating a tidier layout on the screen.

Button Labels

Note and Phrase Buttons can be left blank, but you can easily add a descriptive label that will help you remember what it does or where it fits in your song. Labels can be used to name the notes held by a Note Button (A3 or Cmin7), can be descriptive of their musical function (Bass Pulse or Fast Run), or can describe how they are used in a song (Second Chord or Melody End), or anything else you want.

To add or change a button's labels when the Button Style Editor is open, tap that button, then tap the "Label" button at the lower edge of the editor. A full screen label editor will slide into place from below.

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The upper part of this screen shows an enlarged picture of the selected button. The lower part of this screen is a familiar iPhone keyboard, but its lower right key is labeled "Next." Tap this to toggle between the two lines of the text label, or hold your finger on a text line to place the text cursor using the familiar iPhone magnifying glass.

Above this keyboard, to the left and right of the button image, are some special keys for musical characters (flat, natural, and sharp), prime marks, and superscript numbers.

As you add characters to a line, the font will get smaller (up to a point) so that the text fits within its borders. If you only put text on one of the two lines, then that single line will be vertically centered on the button when you view the button on the main screen.

There are two times when buttons are automatically named: when you select a chord and when you add notes to a Note Button that has no label. Whenever you select a chord for a Note Button, the name of the chord (in abbreviated form) is copied to the button's label. (You can modify the button name to something else if you wish.)

When you add the first note to a button that has no label, the name of that note including its octave number) is used for button's label. If you then add another note, the second label line has an ellipsis ("...") added to indicate that there is more than a single note on that button.

When you are done with the Button Style Editor, you can exit editing completely by hitting the "Cancel" or "Done" buttons in the upper corners, or you can go to the editor for the selected note or phrase button by tapping the note or phrase button icon in the lower left of the editor.

Button Pointers

Note and Phrase Buttons can also have arrow pointers added to their top, bottom, left, and right edges. These pointers change nothing about how PianoStudio plays, only how it looks. You might, for example, use pointers to indicate the order of a set of buttons to play.

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You add pointers by selecting a Note or Phrase button and then tapping the pointer buttons in the lower middle of the Button Style Editor. The icons on these pointer buttons toggle between hollow (unused) and filled in (used) arrows.

Pointers cannot be added to a button edge that is on the outer perimeter of the screen. The pointer buttons for such pointers are disabled. If you move a button that has, for example, a pointer on its bottom edge to the bottom row of the bank, that pointer becomes invisible. You can remove it using the pointer buttons, but once removed it can't be reenabled.