Guide / Fledgetone Pocket: on a phone

Fledgetone Pocket: on a phone

On a phone, Fledgetone opens Pocket: the same studio underneath (the same instruments, effects and songs) on one screen made for a thumb. A song started in Pocket opens in the studio on a computer, and back. The song you were working on opens again by itself when you come back; with none, Pocket starts with What are we making?: tap a starter and it plays straight away (or start a Blank song, or open a project file). The disc button at the top left comes back here for a new song, with a way back to the one you were on. Pocket is in its early stages, and the studio on a computer is the full experience: a notice says so each time Pocket opens, until you tick Don't show this again.

The screen, top to bottom:

• The song, its name, tempo and where it's playing. Tap it for the song's settings: its name, tempo (−, +, or Tap it), the key the notes follow, the metronome, saving and opening the project file, Versions, saving and opening your My sounds, a new song, and Use the full studio here. At the bottom it says whether the phone (or the browser) keeps your songs and sounds even when space runs low, with Ask to keep it when it doesn't promise to; save the file to be safe either way. Share (top right): an MP3 of the whole song to the phone's share sheet, matched to the Loudness picked above it (Streaming -14 LUFS, Loud -9 or Club -6; it starts on the Loud master's target when Loud is on in the mixer, else Streaming), a link to the song, and the project file.
• Versions: in the song's settings, Versions: go back to earlier lists the earlier versions this phone keeps (the same list as the studio's File › Versions…, see Versions: go back to earlier): tap one to go back to it. What are we making? has a Versions button too.
• The song as a grid. Each row is a section of the song, in order, and each column a track; each cell shows what that track plays in that section. Sections are the song's markers (the ones the studio shows on its timeline), or every 4 or 8 bars in a song without any, and each has a letter: sections that play the same thing share one (A A B A). Scroll the grid both ways; the letters and track names stay put.
• Tap a cell to work on that track in that section: the bottom of the screen becomes its instrument. Tap a letter to pick that section: with Loop on, Play loops it (while the song plays it moves there on the next bar line); with Song on, it is just selected.
• The selected section's ⋯ (or holding any letter) arranges the song from there: Play it twice (a linked copy right after it: change either and both change, until you Make it its own), Move earlier or later, Build-up into it (a riser, a snare roll and a hit on its first beat), Bounce it to a pad (everything playing in it made into one sound, on the first empty pad of Your pads, or of a new Bounces track: play it like a drum, see below), Resample it into a Slicer (the section, or the track you have open, chopped into 16 slices on a new Slicer with a stutter pattern) and Take it out (its bars go and the rest of the song moves up). + under the letters adds a section: a linked copy of the selected one, after it.
• + after the tracks (or + Track) adds an instrument, Fledge Synth (the app's own synth, starting on its Wobble bass; its ▶ plays a bass, a lead and chords from it first, without adding anything), Vocals to sing on, Your pads (a Drum Rack: 16 pads for your own sounds), or the Drop pad. Your My sounds (saved in the studio) and starred Favourites are listed first; ★ an instrument to star it, here or in the studio.
• Loop / Song picks what Play plays: the selected section over and over, or the whole song in order.
• Turn the phone on its side and the grid turns into the studio's timeline (sections left to right), with the instrument beside it.
• The transport: undo, Rec (for the selected track), Play (it says what it plays: "Loop A" or "Song") and redo. The screen stays on while the song plays.
• The instrument of the selected track, for the selected section. Its handle makes it bigger or smaller (tap it, or drag it): its pads and steps stay the same size, and a bigger drawer shows more of them, the rest scrolling.
• Drums, Play: the kit's pads, laid out like an MPC with the kick, snare, clap and hat along the bottom (and a light buzz on Android). With Rec on, pads you play while the section plays are written into it, on the nearest 16th.
• Drums, Draw: one drum at a time (pick it along the top) and its 16ths, a bar at a time, a row per beat: tap a step to turn it on or off. Hold a lit step to Roll it over a beat, two beats or a bar (it speeds up from 8ths to 64ths and gets louder into the next hit, taking the place of that drum's steps there), or to choose how often it plays: Always, 75%, 50% or 25% of the time, or only the 1st of every 2, 2nd of every 2, 1st of every 4 or 4th of every 4 times round (a section repeated or looped then changes a little each time; see the piano roll's Notes that don't play every time). Such steps are paler, dashed and marked (50%, 1:2). Drummer writes the section's beat in one of 22 styles (pick again for another take), Fill puts a fill at the end of the section, Swing gives it a shuffle (tap for more), the two dice buttons roll the drum shown (the one named after it, such as Hat) or the whole beat (Beat: new hats and percussion, the same kick and snare) again, in the style the Drummer last wrote there or the one it sounds like (each roll one Undo step), Clear empties it, Copy to all bars puts the bar shown (every drum) in every bar of the section, and Bar 1, Bar 2… pick the bar (it follows the song while playing).
• Your pads (a Drum Rack track) works like drums: Play has its 16 pads (pad 1 bottom left), Draw its steps a pad at a time, and Rec writes in what you play. An empty pad (+ Pad 3) opens Pads, which fills it: Bounce A puts the selected section as you hear it (everything playing, or Just one track…) on that pad, or pick a vocal take. Pads also sets the chosen pad's Level and Pitch (to play a bounce higher or lower), Reverse, and empties it (the bin). The studio's Drum Rack panel has the rest of each pad's settings.
• Keys, bass and synths, Play: Notes are pads of the song's key, low notes at the bottom (− and + move them an octave); Chords are the key's chords. With Rec on, what you play is written in.
• Keys, bass and synths, Draw: the piano roll, with rows of the song's key (and any other notes the part has) and a column per 16th. It opens the drawer full, and leaving it puts it back. Tap for a note as long as the pen (1/16 to a bar: tap the length to change it; it keeps the length you last drew or stretched, shared with the studio's piano roll, and starts at 1/4 for pads and chords), drag right as you draw to make it longer; drag a note to move it, drag its right end to stretch it; dragging to an edge scrolls the roll. Chord draws a chord of the key in one tap, Erase takes notes away. Tap a note to select it: the bar above makes it shorter or longer, a note down or up, Dives it (it starts an octave up and falls to its pitch over a 16th; tap again to take it off), copies it after itself, sets how often it plays (%: always, 75%, 50%, 25%, 1st or 2nd of every 2, 1st or 4th of every 4) or deletes it. Under the roll is a step lane (see Step lanes in the piano roll): on a Fledge Synth track a row of steps for one of its macros, named on the left (tap the name for the next macro); on other tracks the Filter's cutoff. Drag a finger across the steps to set their heights; with Erase it clears them (a cleared step holds the value before). The studio's piano roll has every setting, step length and tool. Scroll with two fingers, or by dragging the note names or the bar numbers; tap a note name to hear it; the house button goes back to the key's home note. Chords fills the part with a progression in the key (held, pulsing, off-beat stabs or an arpeggio).
• Sound: another instrument of the same kind (drums for drums, pitched for pitched), your Favourites and My sounds first; for pitched tracks, Fledge Synth too. Share this sound saves the track's sound as a small file to send, and Open a sound file puts one on the track (and in My sounds). On Your pads it's Pads (see above).
• Sound, on a Fledge Synth track: shape the synth itself. Pick a preset (by group: Bass, Lead, Keys, Chords, Pad, FX, or step with ‹ ›), then move its macros, big sliders named for what they do (on the Wobble bass: Speed up, Squelch, Grit; every bass has three). When the sound wobbles in time with the song, Wobble rate sets how fast, as a note length (1/1 to 1/32, triplets too), so it stays locked to the tempo. Hear it plays a short phrase of the sound as it is now (tap again to stop; Hear on change plays each preset you pick). Every move is one step for Undo. The first time, tap Start the sound to shape it (phones only start sound after a tap). Another instrument… swaps it for one of the others; Play and Draw work as on any pitched track.
• Mix: the track's level, reverb, mute and solo, and deleting it. Check the drop (also under Mix all) renders the selected section and says in a few lines whether it holds up against finished songs of the style you pick: gaps between the hits, whether the bass moves or only wobbles at one steady rate, whether the sub is the right size and in the middle, and whether it's loud enough. Tap a line for what to change. The studio's Does it hit? (Mix check) shows every measurement.
• Drop pad, Play: six big pads that change the whole mix while you hold them: Stutter, Filter, Tape stop, Crush, Gate and Echo (see Drop Pad in the instruments). Hold two at once if you like. Pressing a pad while the song is stopped plays it (as Play would). While the song plays, a press starts on the next 16th and letting go ends on one, so it's always in time. With Rec on while the section plays, each hold is written into the section, from where it started to where you let go, over what that pad had there; the line under the pads shows the section's moves, and Clear takes them out. Add it with + Track › Drop pad.
• Vocals, Sing: Record (or Rec vocal below the grid) sings over the song from the phone's microphone: with the loop on it records the section once and stops by itself, else from the playhead until Stop. Wear headphones, or the microphone records the song too; wired ones, as Bluetooth headphones put the take late (a note says so while recording when the phone's output looks like Bluetooth). Line up recording, under the takes, measures once how late takes arrive on this phone (a few soft clicks through the speaker, recorded by the microphone, about 3 seconds: take headphones off and keep quiet), and takes are then moved back by that much. In the app, the first take starts with a word about why Fledgetone needs the microphone, then the phone asks; if it's refused, Pocket says how to allow it, with a button to the app's settings on Android. Pick the voice's sound (Clean lead, Aggressive lead, Ad-lib, Phone / radio, Dark and wide, Backing stack); each take can be doubled (two more performances either side), tuned (pitch correction to the key, gentle to robotic), put on a pad (the pad button: Whole take on a pad puts it on the first empty pad of Your pads, as recorded, without the vocal sound; Chop onto pads cuts it at its words and hits onto the pads of a new Drum Rack track, to play them in a new order; Chop onto keys is Chop my voice: its syllables tuned onto the keys of a new instrument, played from the notes like any other) or deleted.
• Mix all (above the grid): a mixer for every track, with a fader, mute (M) and solo (S) each, and the master's level, Loud (the Loud master, aimed at the style Check the drop is set to: Club for bass music and hardcore, Loud for future bass, and matched to it at once; you hear it level-matched, the MP3 is the loud one), Crunch (with Loud on: lets it clip on purpose, 70% of the studio's Crunch, matched again at once) and Pump (Duck to kick in that style: a hole in the bass for every kick and snare, the chords, pads and leads pumping on the kick; Undo takes it back).

In the phone app (Android for now): saving a project file, My sounds or an MP3 hands it to the phone's share sheet, to save to Files or Drive or send on; if the sheet is closed without picking anything, Pocket says it wasn't saved. Open file lists every file (Android often doesn't know a project file's type), and a file that isn't a Fledgetone project is refused with a reason. A project file opened from a file manager (Open with) or shared to Fledgetone from another app opens as the song. The phone's Back closes the sheet or dialog that's open, then leaves the starters screen, the mixer or the full piano roll; on Pocket's main screen it puts the app away, as Home does, without closing your song. When the app goes to the background, the song is saved at once, a vocal take being recorded is stopped and kept, and the song pauses; come back and press Play to carry on.

What Pocket doesn't show (automation, plugins other than Fledge Synth, inserts, game music, video) is kept as it is and edited in the studio; a track Pocket can't edit (a sampler or another plugin instrument) still plays, with its level, mute and solo under Mix. A MIDI keyboard plugged into an Android phone plays the selected track. Use the full studio here switches this phone to the studio, and it stays there next time; Help › Pocket, the phone version switches back. Adding ?pocket or ?studio to the address does the same on any device, and is remembered too.