Practice a song from a teacher's video

A teacher’s video on their FlowChord site opens in the practice player: the video, and beside it the teacher’s chord sheet, alive. The line playing is lit, the chord sounding now is drawn on the guitar’s neck, and the parts of the song repeat at a tap. Nothing to install: it works in the browser on a phone, a tablet or a computer.

Before you start

• Anyone can read the chord sheet and hear the first 15 seconds of every video (a video no longer than that, all of it). To keep playing, create a free account: the lesson goes on from the same point.
• With an account, you practice 3 videos free, for good. Every other video, the chord sheet PDF and recording along come with the Student Plan — read The Student Plan.

Steps

Repeat a part

1. Press play. The sheet follows the music: the line playing is lit and stays near the top.
2. Tap the name of a part on the sheet, like Chorus. It repeats until you tap it again, at the speed you set, with one bar counted in before each turn.
3. Drag the A and B edges to make the stretch longer or shorter. They land on the bars.
4. To stop repeating, press Stop beside the B edge, or Esc on a keyboard.

When the teacher marked no parts, drag over the lines you want: that stretch repeats. Going back to the same place twice offers to repeat the last four bars.

Slow down, or change the key

• On a computer, the bar under the video has the speed and the key, each with − and +. On a phone, tap the pill with the speed and the key.
• The speed goes from 50% up to the teacher’s own, in steps of 5%, and the pitch stays the same.
• The key moves up to 6 half steps either way. The chords and the tab, on the sheet and on the neck, are written in the new key: the tab’s notes move with the sound, on the strings a hand plays them. Each chord gets a shape near the chords around it, low on the neck where it can be.
• Changing the key never puts a capo on. The Capo switch beside the key (on a phone, in the same sheet) stays off until you turn it on: then the teacher’s shapes stay, the same sound with the capo on another fret, and the tab’s numbers as the teacher plays them.
• If the video has the teacher’s chords drawn on it, they stay in the original key. In another key, a tag on the video says so: play the chords on the sheet.
• In the phone’s sheet, turn on Speed up 5% each turn and each turn of a repeat gets 5% faster, up to the teacher’s speed.

See the chord, the tab and the hand

• Now and Next sit above the sheet. Show on the neck shows the chord sounding now on the guitar’s neck; turn it off to see the printed diagrams.
• Where the teacher plays a tab, the sheet shows the staff with the tab’s marks (a slide’s /, a hammer-on’s h) and the notes light up on the neck as they sound. The strip follows the teacher’s markers: the chord, the tab, or both, exactly as the video shows them.
• The tab’s numbers never overlap. On a narrow screen, a fast passage that doesn’t fit across one line of the sheet’s staff continues on the line below, as a printed tab does.
• With Show on the neck off, the tab’s staff has its own size: − shows more of the song in smaller numbers, + fewer notes, larger. The size you pick stays on this device.
• The sheet takes the colour the teacher chose for the video, else their brand’s colours; the neck keeps the video’s own style.
• Pause, and the teacher’s hand appears up close in a corner of the video.

Save the parts you practice as clips

1. While a part repeats, press Save.
2. Keep the suggested name or type another, and save. The stretch, the speed and the key are saved with it.
3. Your clips are in the Clips tab, and every clip of every video in My clips. A clip opens its video with the part repeating, at its speed and key.

Download the chord sheet

Press Chord sheet at the top to see the teacher’s chord sheet as the PDF will print it, page by page. Beside it, choose how it prints for you: the Template, the Text size, the Paper, and whether it holds the Chord shapes, the Tab and the Song details. The page changes as you choose. The teacher’s colour and name stay as the teacher set them. With the Student Plan, Download PDF saves it as a PDF, in the key you chose or the original one.

Use the keyboard or your voice

• Press ? to see every key: the space bar plays, L repeats the part, − and + change the speed, [ and ] the key.
• Press the microphone in the bar and say “Maestro, slower”, “Maestro, loop the chorus” or “Maestro, key up” — the same word in every language (“FlowChord, …” works too). Hold V to speak without it. Voice works only in a browser that recognises speech on your device: what you say never leaves it. Every command is in Voice commands in the practice player.

Tips

• On a phone, the chord sheet fills the screen and the video plays small in its corner. Press Enlarge video on the video to see the teacher large above the sheet, and Video in the corner to put it back. Drag the small video to move it out of the way: let go and it settles in the nearest corner. The phone remembers your choices.
• Put the video on a computer screen and the guitar in your hands: every button has a key.
• Press the heart at the top to like the video, and Follow on the teacher’s site to follow them. Both need a free account, and the counts are public.
• A teacher can put the player in a page of their own: it is the same player, made to fit.

Common problems

The key doesn’t change. Changing the key needs a recent browser: see Browsers that work.

The microphone is struck through. Your browser doesn’t recognise speech on the device, and pressing the microphone says so. Use the keys or the buttons instead.