Glossary

What the words used in this manual and in the app mean.

Notation#

Tab: notation that draws the strings as lines and writes the fret to press as a number. Tonograph draws standard notation and tab together.
Bar: a section of the score as long as the time signature. Bars are numbered from 1.
Beat: a position in a bar that holds one note or rest. A chord is several notes on one beat.
Note value: the length of a note or rest, such as a quarter note or an eighth note.
Tuplet: a group of notes that divides a length into an unusual number of parts, such as a triplet.
Voice: an independent line of notes within the same bar. Use voices to write, for example, a thumb bass line and a melody separately.
Grace note: a short note written small just before the next note.
Anacrusis: a bar at the start of a song that is shorter than the time signature. It is not checked for bar length.
Grand staff: two staves joined top and bottom, as used for piano.

Cursor: the mark on the score that shows where you are editing. It points at one beat and one string.
Range selection: several beats selected together. Techniques and copying apply to every note in the range.
Track: the part for one instrument. Each track has its own tuning, sound and volume.
Note value tool: the length used for the next note you place. Choose it at the left end of the Edit palette.
Push Overflow to Next Bar: when a longer note value makes a bar overflow, moving the notes that no longer fit into the next bar, tied across the barline. It’s on at first.
Fill Short Bars With Rests: adding rests at the end of a bar that becomes short when you delete beats or shorten a note value. It’s off at first.
System break: making the score start a new system at a given bar.

Resonance Engine: the name of Tonograph’s sound engine. It computes the vibration of strings and plays them through the pedalboard.
Pedalboard: a board of effect pedals. You can set one up for the whole song and for each track.
Board: the tab in the bottom panel that lights up the notes being played on a fretboard, keyboard or drum pads.
Sound: the kind of tone shaping that follows from a track’s sound program. It decides which pedalboard the track plays through.
Voice (sound): the method used to make string sounds. Choose from Live String, Studio String and Analog Synth.
Latency: the delay between playing a note and hearing it.

Audio Input: the way a guitar’s sound gets into Tonograph. The tuner, string calibration, audio note input, real-time recording and playing through the pedalboard all use it.
Play through pedalboard: playing a connected guitar through the pedalboard of the track under the cursor.
Audio note input: writing the notes you play on a guitar into the score, one at a time.
Audio commands: playing a chosen note (the trigger) to open a dial, then playing an open string to choose an action.
MCP: a standard that lets AI clients use the features of other apps. Tonograph acts as an MCP server so that AI can read and write songs.

.tonograph file: Tonograph’s own format. It saves everything in the song as it is.
.gp file: a format used by many tab editors. You can both open and export it.
Autosave: the app keeps a copy of unsaved changes somewhere else at regular intervals, so you can get your work back the next time you start the app after a crash. Autosave works in the paid version only.