1. Tap Sound to choose one by kind — Pianos & Keys, Organs, Bass, Synths (every synth sound, by flavour) and Orchestra — or use ‹ and › to try the next. Tone makes it darker or brighter. More sound controls (under Tone) adds Character for more or less bite, Length for notes that arrive and fade slower or quicker, and Room for how much of the shared room it's in. Design sound goes deeper.
  2. Record Knob Moves (under the knobs): turn it on, press Play, and turn Tone or Character — here or on your keyboard. When you stop, the move is kept in the song: a filter sweep into the chorus, a pad that slowly opens. Play over a part again to replace it; Moves (beside the button) clears them, or press and hold Keys in a part on the Song overview.
  3. Made a sound you love? Sound → Save This Sound… keeps it, with its design and knobs, at the top of the Sound menu in every song. Add … to Favourites stars a sound you reach for often.
  4. Set the key, and turn on Lock Scale so every note you play fits — no wrong notes. In Roll it lights up the key's rows.
  5. Piano: play the keys — slide a finger across them for a glissando. Chords: one tap plays a whole chord that fits the key. Roll: draw notes, or tap Place: Chord to put down the key's chord on a note in one tap. Drag a note to move it. Select, then drag over notes (two fingers scroll the roll), to Duplicate them, step them up or down, move them an octave, make them Louder or Softer, Copy and Paste — tap an empty spot first and Paste goes there. + and − make the notes bigger.
  6. Turn your phone sideways and the keys fill the screen, with Sustain beside them: hold it (like a sustain pedal) and notes keep ringing after you let go, or tap the lock to keep it on.
  7. Turn on Record my playing, press Play, and play along — your notes join the loop.
  8. Plug-in Instrument… (last in the Sound menu) plays an instrument app you've installed instead of Blackcap's own sounds.
  9. Plays in, at the top, shows the song's parts: tap one to bring Keys in or drop it out there — a piano that waits for the chorus.
  10. A different part for the chorus: press and hold the chorus in Plays in → New Part for Chorus (empty, or from this one). It opens, so play or write it, and it plays in the chorus; everything else keeps Main. Once there are two, Editing (under Plays in) switches between your Keys parts, renames or deletes them; the Keys screen's ⋯ makes a new one too (Start an Empty One, or Start From a Copy of This One). Each starts again at the start of its song part, and follows the chords if it's set to.
  11. Layers: Add a Layer (in the ⋯ beside the sound) gives Keys a second part playing at the same time — a melody over your chords, a harmony, a pad under a bass line. Each layer has its own sound, notes and parts; tap a layer to play and write it, press and hold it to rename or delete it. On the Song overview each layer has its own row, to bring it in or out of each part.
  12. Can't hear what you're playing over the beat? Rest of the song (above Play) turns the rest of the song down — Half, Low or Off — just while you work on this part. Your mix doesn't change.
  13. My Parts (beside Sound) saves what you've played here, with its sound, to bring into any other song.
  14. Nothing on Keys yet? Write a Bass Line puts a simple one on your song's chords — the root of each chord, in time with the beat. Change it in Roll, or play your own.
  15. Follows the chords (under the description, once your song has parts): your Keys part moves to fit each part's chords, the way a player would — so a bass line written over the verse fits the chorus too.

The keyboard sounds: Grand Piano; Classic Electric Piano (the warm, bell-like '70s electric piano of soul and R&B — it barks when you play hard and swings between the speakers); Electric Piano (clean and glassy, a modern stage piano); Reed Electric Piano (nasal and buzzy); Organ (a drawbar organ with a spinning-speaker swirl — Design sound has its drawbars); Church Organ; and FM Synth and FM Bass for bright '80s sounds.

Under Synths, the sounds are grouped by flavour. Classic: the original Lead, Pad, Pluck, Synth Keys, Synth Bass and Theremin. Big Mono: one note at a time, three oscillators into a fat, driven filter — Fat Mono Bass, Squelch Bass (the rubbery acid line), Mono Lead and Sync Lead (play legato and notes slide). Vintage Poly: the warm, slightly drifting chords of '80s records — Poly Brass, Poly Strings, Warm Pad, Poly Keys, Poly Pluck and the huge Supersaw. Dual-Layer Poly: two layers a note that open up and sing as you press harder on a held key (on keyboards with aftertouch) — Dream Brass, Dream Strings, Dream Pad. FM: the glassy, bell-like sounds of mid-'80s digital synths — FM E-Piano, FM Slap Bass, FM Brass, FM Bells, Tubular Bells, FM Marimba, FM Organ. Design sound shows every setting: oscillators, unison, the filter and its envelope, two LFOs (they can follow the tempo), layers, legato and glide — or, for FM, the algorithm and its six operators.

Modulation (in Design sound, on the Big Mono, Vintage Poly and Dual-Layer Poly sounds): Add a Routing moves one part of the sound by another — the mod wheel opening the filter, how hard you play bending the pitch, an LFO sweeping the pan. Up to six. Route Macro 1 or Macro 2 to a few things and that macro becomes one knob on the Keys screen that moves them all at once.