forScore 9: Buttons
This summer we’re releasing forScore 9, and we can’t wait to show you what’s new—so we aren’t! Over the next few weeks, we’ll be giving you a sneak peek at some of the biggest changes we’re making.
With this major update, we focused on making forScore more flexible and personal than ever before. Our audience continues to grow at an incredible rate, so customization and personalization are essential to ensuring that forScore can meet the needs of each new user. We’ve got a lot of big things to show you, and we’re kicking things off today with a powerful new feature called Buttons.
Like the essential Links feature, the new Buttons tool allows you to place tappable, colored dots anywhere on the page. Instead of simply handling repeats, however, buttons are far more versatile and powerful. They can be programmed to perform one of seven major functions, with plenty of options that give you a wide range of new ways to make your musical life a little easier.
The first two actions allow you to control forScore’s metronome: start or stop the metronome (after a customizable delay, if needed) or change the tempo partway through your piece. The third allows you to start or stop the current audio track (again—after a delay, if needed), and the fourth plays a note with the pitch pipe.
The fifth option allows you to send a set of MIDI commands, including program changes, Song Select messages, or raw hexadecimal codes. There’s also a new type of MIDI entry: delay. Now you can specify a number of milliseconds to wait between sent commands. This new delay entry is not only available for buttons, but also for commands sent automatically when opening a score or bookmark.
If you’ve used forScore’s Notes feature and the “remind me” option, you’ll be familiar with dropdown note reminders. Now, you can program buttons to show these same kinds of reminders on command.
Finally, the Navigation action allows you to move to the next or previous score or to perform either a half- or full-page turn (the opposite of what would normally happen, depending on your settings).
Each button uses a customizable, action-specific color to make buttons instantly recognizable. We think buttons are going to be a fantastic new way to control forScore’s many functions, and we can’t wait to share them with you later this year. Be sure to check back soon, though, since this is just the start of what we’ve got coming in forScore 9.