Song Buddy - Help & Support

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Getting Started

1 Open Song Buddy. Each song you work on lives in its own .songbuddy file — tap New Document to create one, or open an existing one from Files.
2 You'll see two options: Separate Audio… to split a song into its individual parts (stems), or Add Track… to bring in an audio file as-is. Both accept audio or video files — for a video, Song Buddy pulls out the soundtrack automatically.
3 On Mac, you can also drag and drop an audio file directly onto the window.
4 Once your stems are ready, the waveforms for each part appear as coloured rows. Tap or click anywhere on a waveform to jump to that point in the song.

💡 Song Buddy supports any audio format your device can read — MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, AIFF, and more. You can also drop in a video file (MP4, MOV, and more) and Song Buddy will extract its soundtrack for you.

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Separating a Song into Stems

1 Tap Separate Audio… and pick an audio or video file from your device. If you choose a video, Song Buddy extracts its soundtrack first.
2 Song Buddy will separate the song into up to 6 stems: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, piano, and other. The whole process runs on your device — no internet required.
3 A progress bar shows how far along the separation is. Most songs take a few minutes. You can cancel at any time.
4 When separation is complete, all stems appear as coloured waveform rows ready to play.

💡 Separation quality depends on the source recording. Clean studio recordings tend to separate more cleanly than live recordings with heavy reverb or distortion.

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Opening & Importing from Other Apps

1 You don't have to start inside Song Buddy. On iPhone/iPad, find an audio or video file in the Files app, tap Share → Song Buddy (or use "Open in"), and it hands the file straight over.
2 You can also share a video straight from the Photos app, or from any app with a share sheet — pick Song Buddy from the row of apps.
3 Song Buddy asks to confirm, then separates the file into stems and saves it as a new .songbuddy song in your Song Buddy folder, ready to open and play.
4 On Mac, right-click an audio or video file in Finder and choose Open With → Song Buddy, or drop it onto the Song Buddy Dock icon. A fresh window opens and separation starts right away — your other open songs are never touched.

💡 Importing from another app always creates a brand-new song, so it will never overwrite the project you already have open.

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Playback Controls

1 Tap Play / Pause to start or stop playback. The return-to-start button jumps back to the beginning.
2 Mute a stem by tapping the speaker icon on its row — the waveform dims to show it's silent.
3 Solo a stem to hear only that part. All other stems are silenced while a stem is soloed. Tap solo again to release it.
4 Drag the volume slider on each stem row to balance the mix exactly how you want it.
5 The master volume control (speaker icon in the toolbar on Mac, or the Master sheet on iOS) adjusts the overall output level.
6 Tap or click anywhere on a waveform to seek to that position. On Mac, you can also drag the playhead directly.
7 Give a stem your own colour: tap the colour well beside its name and pick any shade. The choice is saved with the song, so your colour scheme is there every time you reopen it.

💡 To practice a bass line, solo the bass stem. To play along on guitar, mute the guitar stem and leave everything else audible.

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Loop Regions

1 On Mac, hold Shift and drag across any waveform to paint a loop region. The highlighted area will repeat continuously.
2 On iPhone/iPad, open the Regions sheet and tap + to create a loop at the current playhead position. You can then drag its edges on the waveform to adjust it.
3 You can save multiple named loops in one document — perfect for marking the verse, chorus, bridge, or a tricky solo.
4 Tap a loop in the Regions list to activate it. The loop toggle in the transport controls must be enabled for the region to repeat.
5 Rename a loop by double-clicking its name on Mac, or by tapping and holding the row on iOS.
6 Delete a loop with the trash icon (Mac) or a swipe-to-delete gesture (iOS).

💡 Set a tight loop around just two or four bars of a difficult passage. Once you can play it cleanly at full speed, widen the loop to include more context.

🐢

Speed & Pitch

1 The Speed slider lives in the Practice panel — click the tempo button at the bottom of the window on Mac, or tap the gear icon in the bottom toolbar on iPhone/iPad. It sets playback rate from 30% to 100%, and the pitch stays the same regardless of speed.
2 Start slow — around 50–60% — until you can play the passage cleanly, then gradually raise the speed until you reach 100%.
3 The Pitch stepper shifts the entire song up or down in semitones (±12 st) without affecting speed. Use this to match a song to your instrument's tuning, or to transpose a key for easier fingering.
4 Both settings are saved with your .songbuddy file so they are restored next time you open it.

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Metronome

1 The metronome lives in the Practice panel, alongside speed and pitch. On Mac, click the tempo button at the bottom of the window; on iPhone/iPad, tap the gear icon in the bottom toolbar.
2 Toggle Enable to turn on the click track. Song Buddy automatically detects the tempo — no manual BPM entry needed. The tempo readout follows your playback speed, so slowing the song down slows the click to match.
3 By default the beat is detected from the most rhythmic part (usually the drums). To use a different stem, open that stem's menu — right-click its row on Mac, or tap its name on iPhone/iPad — and choose Use for Beat Detection.
4 If the detected tempo seems doubled or halved, use the ÷2 or ×2 buttons to correct it, or tap re-detect to analyse the beat afresh.
5 When the beat lands somewhere ÷2/×2 can't fix, use Tap Tempo: tap the button in time with the music and Song Buddy rebuilds the grid from your taps. Tapping while the song plays locks in both the tempo and where the beats fall.
6 The volume slider controls how loud the click is in the mix.

💡 The metronome follows the drummer's natural timing where beats were detected, then fills in the gaps on the grid — so it stays tight even through tempo variations.

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Bass Notes

1 Song Buddy can read the bass line for you and show every note on a scrolling piano-roll lane beneath the waveforms — ideal for learning a line note for note.
2 Open the bass stem's menu — right-click its row on Mac, or tap its name on iPhone/iPad — and choose Detect Notes. Detection runs on your device; a progress bar appears with a Stop button if you want to cancel.
3 When it finishes, the piano-roll lane appears. Each note is drawn at its pitch and length, and the lane scrolls in time as the song plays so you can follow along.
4 The detected notes are saved with your .songbuddy file, so they're there the next time you open it — no need to re-detect.
5 To remove them, open the bass stem's menu again and choose Clear Notes.

💡 Pair the piano-roll with a tight loop and reduced speed: solo the bass, loop a couple of bars, slow it to 60%, and read the notes off the lane until they're under your fingers.

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Tuner

1 The chromatic tuner lives inside the Input panel. Open the Input panel from the toolbar on Mac, or the Input sheet from the toolbar menu (or the opening screen) on iPhone/iPad, then switch on the Tuner section at the top. A green dot shows it's listening.
2 Play a note on your instrument into the microphone or audio interface. The tuner shows the nearest note name, octave, and how many cents sharp or flat you are.
3 The bar turns green when you are within ±8 cents of the target pitch — that's in tune.
4 Switch the Tuner section off when you're done — it stops listening straight away. Closing the Input panel also stops it.

💡 If the song is pitched-shifted in Song Buddy, tune your instrument to match the shifted pitch before playing along.

🎤

Live Input

1 Connect your instrument or microphone. On Mac, open the floating Input panel from the toolbar. On iPhone/iPad, tap the Input option from the toolbar menu — or from the Input button on the opening screen, so you can set up and monitor your sound before opening any song.
2 Select your input device from the picker at the top. Enable Monitoring to hear yourself through the FX chain in real time.
3 The built-in amp section gives you a 3-band tone stack (bass, mid, treble), a compressor, and a choice of cabinet simulations — from a clean 1×12 to a closed-back 4×12.
4 Add reverb with the Reverb knob to place yourself in a room alongside the track.
5 Save your favourite settings as a preset using the + button at the bottom of the Input panel. Presets are shared across all your documents.

💡 Use Test with file… in the Input panel to audition your amp and effect settings through a chosen audio file — useful when you don't have your instrument plugged in.

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Exporting Stems

1 On Mac, go to File → Export tracks… (⌘E). A save panel opens — choose a folder and Song Buddy copies all stem files there.
2 On iPhone/iPad, long-press a stem row and tap Export to share the individual stem file via AirDrop, Files, or any other app.
3 Stems are exported as Apple Lossless (ALAC) m4a files — lossless quality at roughly half the size of WAV.
4 You can import exported stems into any DAW (Logic Pro, GarageBand, Ableton, etc.) for further editing or mixing.

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iCloud Sync

1 Song Buddy keeps your songs in a Song Buddy folder in iCloud Drive. Save a song there and it shows up on every device signed into the same Apple Account — separate on your Mac, practise on your iPhone.
2 The folder appears in the Files app (iPhone/iPad) and in Finder → iCloud Drive (Mac). Songs imported from another app are saved here automatically.
3 Everything a song needs — stems, loops, tempo, detected notes, and your colours — travels inside the single .songbuddy file, so nothing is left behind when it syncs.

💡 To avoid sync conflicts, let a song finish uploading on one device before opening it on another — a spinning cloud icon next to the file means it's still syncing.

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Settings

1 On Mac, open Settings via the Song Buddy menu → Settings… (⌘,). On iPhone/iPad, settings are accessible from the toolbar menu inside each document.
2 Default export folder (Mac) — Choose a folder that Song Buddy will open automatically when you export tracks, so you don't have to navigate every time.
3 Audio input / output device (Mac) — Choose which interface Song Buddy uses for playback and for the live input chain.
4 Default master volume — Sets the starting volume for new documents.
5 Show welcome screen again — Brings back the intro guide shown on first launch.