Playback

Playback in battuta is a checking tool, not a performance engine. It answers two questions: did I write the notes I meant? and does the form I notated actually play that way?

The player

Switch to page view — the controls appear next to the view toggle.

Playing: pause, stop, the live tempo select, the clickable progress bar and the elapsed/total readout.

Control	Does
▶ / ⏸	Play or pause from the current position
⏹	Stop and clear the highlight
tempo	0.5×, 0.75×, 1×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 2× — applies live, and is remembered
progress bar	Click anywhere to seek; the readout shows elapsed / total at the chosen tempo

The note being sounded lights up as it plays, and the view scrolls when the playing measure leaves the window. Audio and highlight come from one timeline, so they cannot drift apart.

The sounding notes highlighted mid-playback in page view.

Sound is a sampled piano — a subset of the Salamander piano bundled inside the application. No network request, no CDN, nothing to configure.

Any edit stops playback

Editing the document, switching tabs, or switching views stops the player. The timeline is computed from the document as it was, so the moment you change the document it is stale — battuta stops rather than play something that no longer matches what you see.

What you hear reflects what you wrote

Playback reads the document, not just the pitches:

• Ties are held. A tie chain — including one that crosses barlines and one that spans repeated passes — sounds as a single attack for its full summed length.
• Articulations shape the release. Tenuto and notes under a slur or phrase mark sound their full value, staccato about half, staccatissimo about a third. An explicit articulation beats the slur it sits under.
• Unmarked notes detach slightly (about 90 % of their value), so legato is audible by contrast rather than being the default everywhere.
• Accidentals, key signatures and measure accidentals resolve to real sounding pitch, because Verovio resolves them before the note reaches the sampler.

Repeats, voltas and jumps

The player takes the form: repeat barlines, volta sets, and one dal-segno or da-capo jump with fine and To Coda respected. Repeated passes highlight the notes you actually wrote, not copies of them.

The details of what is and isn’t followed are on Repeats and form.

Limits worth knowing

• Playback lives in page view only. Edit view has no player.
• There is no selection-range playback yet, no metronome, no per-staff mute, and no tempo marks from the score — the tempo select is the only tempo.
• Dynamics and hairpins are notated but not yet performed as volume changes.