Help

Your profile is the key that helps other AudioDraft users to find you and your valuable skills. Fill in your profile with care and you are more likely to be found by other users looking for new interesting people to work with.

Browse Users page to find new artists to work with, start following them and check the projects they are working on.

Browse Projects page to find interesting projects that you like and send an applications to those projects.

Remember to send out AudioDraft invitations from the Invites page to your friends that you make music with.

You can create a new project from your Studio page by clicking the Create new project button.

You should write a clear description of the project, upload a project picture if you have one and add skill tags to the skills needed field if you are looking for artists with particular skills to join your project. General tags can be used to describe your project attributes such as band, genre, feeling etc.

Whether the project should be public or private is up to you. Public projects can be listened and commented by all AudioDraft users and private projects can be listened only by its members. In order to make changes to project and upload or download samples you have to be a member in the project. Secret projects are same as private projects but they are not shown at the Projects page.

Once the project has been created you can always modify project information and visibility from the Project page.

After you hit the Create button you'll see the project Sketching Tool view. New project is always empty in the beginning and we will guide you next to upload samples, learn basic functionalities and record audio.

Here is an overview of the Sample library folder.
Samples are listed in the middle and text color represents the color of the user who has uploaded the sample. User colors can be viewed by selecting the Members tab.

Click the Add new sample button to upload your samples. You can currently upload only WAV and MP3 audio files.

First select the sample you want to manage and then click the Manage sample rights button to open the sample rights management window.
From here you can set sample edit and download rights for each individual project user. Right to edit allows you to make arrangements with the sample in the project. Download right allows you to download the original sample file.

Making arrangements with the samples is very easy. Just drag and drop any sample from the library on a track. Please note that if you don't have edit rights to a sample you can't drag and drop the sample on a track.

You can control the song playback by using the transport buttons Play and Stop. You can move around the song by dragging the playhead on the timeline below it. Press stop twice to move the playhead to the beginning of the song.

Track control box contains the basic functionalities for a single track. You can control track volume and stereo pan, mute the track, solo the track and arm the track for recording. Volume meter gives you a visual cue about the overall volume level of track playback. Track name can be renamed by selecting track name, typing in a new name and pressing enter. New track can be created by pressing the Create new track button below the track control boxes.

You can add timed comments on samples. These comments can be very useful for example to point out song chord progressions or issues at certain parts of the song. Move your mouse over the sample clip that is placed on a track and you'll notice a small comment bar at the bottom of the sample clip area. Now you can add a timed comments anywhere on the area of the comment bar. Comments can opened and closed by clicking the small triangle on the comment bar.

Save button does exactly what is says: It saves the project. After saving all the changes you have made are committed and stored for good. Edit button is used when multiple users are working on the project at the same time. When this happens, the user who opened the project last sees the project in a "locked mode" and is allowed only to listen to the project. The user who is editing the project can save the changes and press edit button to release the "editing turn" to the other user. The comment chat below the Sketching Tool can be useful in these situations for communications.

First you must have a project open with an empty track. Press the track arm button to prepare the track for recording. Note that you can arm only empty tracks! After you have pressed the arm button Flash application will ask you to give AudioDraft permission to access your audio input. Select Allow to proceed. Please note that AudioDraft doesn't access your web camera.

Next you have to select an audio input you would like to use. Typically you have only line in and microphone of your computer selectable, but if you have an external audio interface connected to your computer it should be also available in the list. Audio input is only asked once during a project session. Set the input volume as you see best. Thumb rule is to keep it slightly below maximum. Use Reduce Echo effect to lower the possibility of feedback when you're monitoring a microphone input channel. In this screenshot example we have created a second track, uploaded a background beat sample to the library and added it on the track. You don't need to add a beat to the project but in some cases it is easier play an instrument or sing when you have a solid background beat going on. We use audio line in for recording so we have also turned the monitoring on to hear what we are playing. Now we are ready to start recording.

Now that you have the track armed and ready to go you should see the record button active. Move the playhead to the position you want to start recording from and you are ready to go. Press record button to start recording. When you start recording the playback starts to move and you'll notice that a coloured area starts to draw on top of the empty track. This indicates that the track is currently recording. Once you are ready with the recording press Stop button. After you have stopped recording the recorded audio is analyzed and a waveform image of the audio is drawn. This usually takes few seconds but can take longer if you have recorded a very long take.

Each recorded take is saved and stored to the Sample library after you stop recording. If you are not satisfied with your last take you can always delete it from the Sample library. Remember that you have to SAVE the project in order to store your recordings and changes to the project.

Have fun recording!