SuperMegaUltraGroovy has released a significant update to their Mac app, Capo. This update focuses on changes that improve the overall user experience, and adds support for the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar by offering a quick way for users to move around, scrub through their songs, and access commonly-used playback controls.
Song Views
Song Views provide a way for users to choose between the all-new Practice view, and the Tabbing view that reveals Capo's Spectrogram display—where users can "draw" notes quickly to generate tablature. Users can now also selectively disable the display of Capo's automatically-detected chords as well as the tablature display.
Transcription Playhead
Also included in this update is the new Transcription Playhead, a playback mode that makes it easier to listen to short licks or individual notes over and over again. The Transcription Playhead always re-starts playback from the same point until it is moved to a different location. Musicians working on detailed transcriptions or listening to complex phrases will find this to be especially useful.
Touch Bar
Capo now also takes advantage of the Touch Bar that was introduced with the new MacBook Pro, offering a waveform overview scrubber that displays not just the waveform of the song, but also the location of any regions that the user has set. The overview can be tapped to jump to a specific point in the song, or scrubbed (with audible feedback) by gliding their finger along the Touch Bar.
Improved Scrubbing
The scrubbing feature in Capo—also activated by clicking and dragging the playhead on Capo's timeline—is reworked considerably in this release as well. Powered by an all-new audio effect that SuperMegaUltraGroovy is working to develop further, it can "freeze time" in a song and allows users to identify individual notes more easily in complicated phrases.
As always, Capo also allows users to slow down music without altering its pitch (unlike a slowed down vinyl record), and transpose music to other keys. Capo also detects chords in music automatically, and offers simple-to-use tabbing functionality on the Mac with support for Guitar, Bass, Ukulele, Banjo, and Mandolin in various tunings.
Availability and Pricing
Capo 3.5 is available today from the Mac App Store for a discounted price of $29.99 over the holidays. Capo 3.5 will return to its original price of $49.99 early in the new year. A free trial is available at capoapp.com/mac and is fully functional until 5 minutes of audio pass through the system, when noise is slowly inserted into the output.
