Music Stand for Android just got a handful of great new features to make it even more powerful. We've added a full-featured metronome to help you stay on tempo, and added looping to the audio player to help you perfect that tricky section while you're rehearsing.
Metronome
PCO Services has let you store the tempo in beats per minute for a long time, and now Music Stand for Android can take advantage of that. Tap the metronome button in the toolbar to get started. You'll see controls on the left, and options on the right. If an editor has already entered the BPM online, it will be set for you in Music Stand and will change as you change songs, even while it's playing.
To change the tempo, tap it in the toolbar to open up the full metronome view. From there you can tap out a new tempo, or turn the dial to set your speed. The dial is speed-sensitive (how appropriate), so turn it fast for big adjustments, and slow for fine tuning. After changing the tempo or meter, you'll have the option to reset it to the saved value, or if you have editor permissions, you'll be able to save it back to the song arrangement.
Tap the volume icon from the full metronome to change the sound settings. From there you can adjust the relative volume of the metronome and the audio player. You can also choose other sound sets for the main metronome sound or turn off accent downbeats to have one steady sound.
At slower tempos, you might use the 2x button to double the tempo, or the 16ths button to add a shaker between the regular beats. When you play the metronome, the dots in the toolbar flash to the beat. If you'd like to be able to see the beat more prominently, hit the flash icon and the whole toolbar will flash to the beat.
Audio Looping
Music Stand is great not only on stage, but sometimes even more so for rehearsing. That's why we've added audio looping. After opening the audio player, tap the loop icon and you'll get handles around the progress bar. Drag the left or right handles to adjust the beginning and ending of the loop. When you play your audio with looping on, it will continuously repeat the section between the handles.
And More
We've also tucked a couple of other features into this release. Once you play an audio file, it's saved in Music Stand and can now be played even when you are offline. In addition, when one audio file finishes, the next one in the playlist starts, plus you can now play and pause audio from your device's status bar.
If you like these new features or Music Stand for Android in general, feel free to leave us a good review on Google Play! To keep up with all the latest news for PCO Services, follow PCOServices on Facebook or Twitter. For the latest news on all our apps, including People, Check-Ins, Resources, & Registrations, follow the general PlanningCenter account on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.