# Playback

MidiEditor allows you to play the song when you have selected an output device.

You can find buttons for the playback in the playback menu or in the toolbar. There are buttons which allow you to start a playback (or a recording, please read Recording Midi data for more details), to stop and pause the playback, and to control the cursor. Moreover, individual tracks and channels can be muted and the metronome can be controlled from within the playback menu.

## Muting Tracks and Channels

Sometimes it makes sense to play only specific channels or tracks in order to listen to one or more instruments at a time. Hence, specific tracks and channels can be muted. If either the track or the channels assigned to a Midi event is muted, the event will be ignored during the playback. Hence, notes of muted tracks and channels will not be audible during the playback.

In order to mute a specific track or a channel, please press in the according list in the track editor or the channel editor. Click again in order to make the channel or track audible again.

Moreover, there are actions which allow you to mute or make audible all tracks or channels at once. These buttons can be found in the playback menu as well as in the track editor or the channel editor.

If you want to play one channel alone, the channel can be marked to be the "solo channel". This will automatically mute all other channels without having to mute them manually. The solo mode can be entered by clicking for the according channel in the channel editor.

## Setting the Cursor

You can specify the position in the song where the playback starts when pressing the play button. This can be done by double clicking into the time line above the event view.

In the playback menu there are additional actions which can move the cursor to the next or previous measure ( and ) or reset the cursor to start the playback at the beginning of the file ().

## Speed

Sometimes it will be useful to slow done the playback speed (or to speed it up). This can be done by setting the playback speed in the playback menu. Setting the playback speed to 1 (default) will play at normal speed, while setting it to 2 will result in a two times faster playback speed. Playback speeds lower than 1 will slow down the playback.

## Metronome

The metronome can be enabled or disabled in the playback menu or in the toolbar. Enabling the metronome will result in a metronome sound at each beat during the playback.

## Locking the Screen

When you play a song and there must not be any delays while playing you may have to lock the screen by enabling in the playback menu. This mean that the event view does not follow the cursor while playing, because the repainting of the window can cause a short delay on slower machines.