Capo — Reverse Engineering Rock and Roll

Overview

What is Capo touch?

Capo touch helps musicians learn to play songs by ear. Capo uses advanced machine learning technology (e.g. chord detection) and advanced signal processing (e.g. slowing music without affecting pitch, instrument isolation) to make learning faster.

Audience

Capo is for all musicians, at almost all levels. More specifically, any musician that is comfortable with the basics of playing their instrument—any instrument—will find Capo useful.

Capo is often used in music education, but it's not just an educational tool. Professional, award-winning musicians use Capo as a part of their regular practice and work.

Availability and Pricing

Capo touch is available from the App Store for $9.99.

We are happy to supply promo codes for review purposes, free of charge. Contact us at press@supermegaultragroovy.com to request yours now.

Getting Started

If you've never used Capo touch before, or it's been a while since you last used it, read over this section first. Otherwise you can skip to the New in Capo 2.5 section below to get a walkthrough of the significant new features.

Requirements

Capo touch 2.5 requires an iPhone or iPad running iOS 9.3 or higher. You must also have access to audio files in the MP3, M4A, WAV, or AIFF format. This includes past purchases from iTunes.

Note that Capo cannot be used with audio files that are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). That includes songs that are available for streaming via Apple Music or other streaming services.

Why can't I use my streaming music?

Long story short, a streaming subscription buys you the right to listen to music in the streaming catalog. The fact that you can download a track for offline use is merely for the convenience of listening while you're away from an Internet connection, and that's about all.

In contrast, purchased songs can be burned to a CD for use in the car, or used as part of a soundtrack in a personal home video—activities that are covered under "fair use". That includes the analysis and manipulation of audio using Capo touch.

Creating a new Project

Tap the '+' icon at the top-left of your screen to reveal a list of sources for importing audio into Capo. Tap 'My Music', and you can browse your music library by Artist, Album, Song, or Playlist. When prompted, allow Capo access to see your music library or else you won't be able to load anything into the app.

Help! I accidentally denied Capo access!

Should you accidentally deny Capo access, you can enable it in the Settings app where you adjust your Privacy settings.

You can also choose to load your music from audio files using another source such as iCloud Drive or Dropbox, provided you have other apps installed that offer Document Provider Extensions. All the popular services offer this feature, so it offers users a lot of options.

Once you've chosen a song, a new Project is created and you'll be taken to the in-song view where most of Capo's magic happens.

Know the Lingo: Projects

Capo stores a copy of the audio file, the detected chords and beats, and any changes you make (like speed, pitch adjustments, Regions, etc.) into a Project. The Project will automatically save as you work with it, and can be synchronized with other iOS devices, and Macs running Capo for Mac via iCloud.

Ideas for exploration

There is a lot you can do with Capo touch, but here are some ideas to get you oriented with Capo's most commonly-used features.

Adjust the speed and pitch of the song using the controls at the bottom of the display while working in a project. You can hear the changes take effect live during playback.
Create regions by tapping the leftmost button in the Heads-Up Display at the bottom of your screen (the button with the 'R' in it). Press and hold the Play button to select the "Region Looping" button, then tap it to begin looping playback in the region you created. Note that the playhead (the blue line in the middle of the screen) must be inside the region in order for looping playback to start.
Reveal the Song Settings by tapping the button in the navigation bar at the top-right of the screen. Select the Isolation tab (if it's not already) and select 'Solo' from the Effect control. Play with all the sliders to hear how our isolation engine works.
Change one of the detected chords by tapping it, then tapping its blue title to reveal the chord chooser. Pick a different shape from the list, or one of the other chords at the bottom of the screen (which Capo detected as being "likely" at this point of the song.) New chords can be searched, and all the matching chords in the song can be changed at once by toggling the 'Change All' button underneath the selected shape.

New in Capo touch 2.5

See More Music

If you're one of the millions of Apple Music subscribers that enjoy filling your music collection with new songs, playlists, and albums, Capo touch 2.5 now helps you get access to that music easily. While browsing “My Music” for songs to learn in Capo touch, all of the songs in your music collection are shown, and a cloud icon will appear beside the songs that are not yet available to import.

Even when downloaded to the device, songs available in the Apple Music streaming catalog are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology that prevents apps like Capo touch from offering advanced playback and analysis features. When you select one of these protected songs, Capo touch locates it in the iTunes Store and provides you with two options to make the song available.

Buy on iTunes

Tapping this button takes you directly to the iTunes Store app with the chosen song highlighted so you can purchase a copy in the iTunes Plus format that is free of DRM. Upon completing your purchase, and after the song is done downloading, you can tap the back-link to Capo at the top-left of your screen to start importing the song into a new project.

Show in Music

If you already bought the song you selected, then it just needs to be downloaded from the cloud. Tapping this button opens the Music app with the song highlighted, where you can tap the cloud download button to the right of the song to start the download. Once the download completes, you can return to Capo by using the back-link at the top-left of your screen. As above, Capo starts importing the song into a new project.

The item didn't load right away!

In some cases, the system hasn't yet made the song available to other apps immediately after purchasing the track. It could be that you tapped the back-link to Capo a little too quickly, or the system software just needs a “gentle reminder” to make the song available.

We've found that tapping the 'Show in Music' button—which triggers the song to start playing again—helps to resolve the issue.

In our extensive testing, the above sequence has always resolved the issue, so please get in touch if the above steps are not working for you.

Improved Audio Scrubbing

One of the coolest things we added in Capo 3.5 for the Mac was an all-new Audio Scrubbing engine which we've been calling the "Audio Freezer" and we're excited to be bringing it to Capo touch in this update.

You can hear the new scrubbing engine by panning the waveform while audio is playing. If you swipe quickly, you'll no longer hear the stuttering that used to come with our older method of scrubbing audio, and overall things sound much more smooth.

But the real power comes from holding the waveform still during playback. Using this feature, you can "freeze" a note in time and try to pick out exactly what you're hearing. Very cool, and very helpful!

All-New Project Browsing

The most visible of the changes in Capo touch 2.5 is the all-new Projects browser. This change puts your Projects up front in the app, and by using the default date sort order you will see the newest Projects always visible at the top.

Projects can be sorted by date or by name, and we offer both an icon grid view as well as a list view. The icon grid layout will be an especially welcome change for our iPad users who've been suffering with our very phone-centric project list layout.

For our very long-time customers, this will be most similar to how the first-generation Capo app worked and we think they're going to love the change the most.

Directly Import Audio Files

Capo now offers built-in support for Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and other document providers that are installed on the device. This is a feature targeted square at our professional users that are collaborating with other musicians and producers, and they need access to the scratch tracks and stems that are exported from a DAW during production.

Accessing these files is just as easy as adding from your music collection. By tapping the '+' icon at the top-left of the Projects screen, you will see a listing of available sources, and you can browse and search them just as you would using the installed apps.

Jump to Start / Jump to End Gestures

By double-tapping the left- or right-hand side of the waveform display, you can now jump to the start or end of a song. This was a very popular request from our users, and we're happy to finally offer a solution for those that asked for it.

Snapping Unlock

Another popular request from our users, Capo now allows you to disable its default snapping behavior when resizing regions for looping. Simply drag your finger below the "resize handles" to disable the snapping feature while dragging.

You can even start a drag in the same area above or below the resize handle to quickly begin resizing with snapping disabled.

Other Improvements

A nifty addition to Capo touch is that users will now see a "What's New" onboarding UI that contains the above videos and short descriptions of everything that's new in this release. This is something we've wanted to add for a long time, and look forward to filling it with all kinds of cool new features as we keep adding them.
iPad users will be happy to see that we've changed to a split layout for the My Music browsing. Finally!
Dynamic Type support has been extended in more places, though we have a long way to go still. Notable changes are evident in the speed and pitch sliders, which had especially small text.

Any Questions?

This review guide does not contain a comprehensive list of Capo's features, so we fully expect you to have some questions while taking a look at the product.

Please email us if anything comes to mind during the course of your review. We're here to help you out in any way we can, so don't be shy!

Capo touch 2.5

Review Guide