RUN IT DOWN: Song Form & Bars
Trevor Lawrence
It counts. You play. Play a song into your phone or add the file. In seconds RUN IT DOWN gives you the key, the tempo, the meter, where bar 1 is, and every section with its bar count. Made by drummer and MD Trevor Lawrence Jr. for every gig where the band gets the song an hour before downbeat. WHAT YOU GET KEY · TEMPO · METER in big type, with half time, double time and the relative key one tap away. Bar 1, found for you. Anything before it is the pickup (+1, +2), so the lead-in never counts as a bar. THE LINE: the whole form on one card, like INTRO 8 · V1 16 · HOOK 8 · BRIDGE 4 · VAMP · OUTRO. Odd-length sections, like a 7-bar bridge or a 10-bar outro, are marked in red so you see the watch-outs before you play them. THE STRIPS: one strip of tape per section, as long as its bar count and colored by repeat, so you see what comes back. Tap a strip to play from its bar 1. A bar counter while it plays that counts what THE LINE shows: V1 · 11/16, and HOOK 8 ×2 counts 1 to 8 twice. Section names in the band's words (INTRO, V1, PRE, HOOK, BRIDGE, VAMP, OUTRO and more), or type your own: SHOUT, MODULATION, DRUM BREAK. Your names come back as buttons on every song. EVERY METER 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8 and 12/8. It hears odd meters like 5/4, 7/8 and 11/8 and counts the bars in them. Meter change mid-song? Set one section's time signature, like two bars of 4/4 in a 7/8 tune, and its bars re-count while the rest stays put. Count 7/8 your way: 2+2+3, 3+2+2 or 2+3+2. CLICK and COUNT IN follow the meter, section by section. TWO WAYS IN LISTEN: play the song in the room, through the phone's mic or a plugged-in interface, and it counts it. It stops by itself when the band stops and trims the silence off both ends. ADD SONG: pick any audio or video file, or share one to RUN IT DOWN from Files, Voice Memos or a video. Apple Music and Spotify songs are locked to those apps: play them out loud and use LISTEN. THE ONE Beat turned around? ◀ BEAT · TURN IT AROUND · BEAT ▶ moves bar 1 for the whole song, and TRY THE OTHER ONE jumps to the app's second choice. The click and the count-in follow at once. Or tap COUNT IT OFF and tap the count on bar one with the record (1 · 2 · 3 · 4 in 4/4, 1 · 2 · 3 in 7/8); every section re-counts from your one and your names stay. PLAY + PRACTICE Top, back a bar, play, forward a bar, next section, and a strip of the whole song to scrub. Beat lights 1 2 3 4 under the counter. LOOP the part you're learning. PRACTICE SPEED 50–100%, same pitch. COUNT IN gives one bar of clicks first; CLICK is locked to the record's own beat and plays straight 8THS or the BEAT, accents on or off, through every meter change and every speed. FIX IT It's a fast first read, and your ears get the last word. Name any section (all its repeats at once, or just this one), set it to any length from 1 to 32 bars, add a note for the stand (HITS ON 4), split, merge, change the time signature, flip the key to its relative, halve or double the tempo. Every change is one tap to UNDO. When it's right, tap LOOKS RIGHT. MUSIC STAND Tap THE LINE and the whole song fills the screen, as big as it goes, with your notes, no scrolling. The part playing now is lit. Tap a block to play from there. The screen stays on, and playback keeps going if the phone locks. THE SET Your songs for the gig, in order. SAVE SET for Sunday, pull it back up from SETS, and CLEAR the pad for the next gig. Clearing never deletes a song. COPY SHORTHAND One tap copies the title, key, tempo and the line as text, ready to paste in the group chat. PAD OR STAGE A yellow legal-pad look for the day, a dark STAGE look for the stage. NOTHING LEAVES YOUR PHONE No account. No sign-in. No ads. Every song is counted on-device and never uploaded, and it works in airplane mode. The microphone is on only while LISTEN is recording. PRICE The first 3 songs are free. After that, one payment of $0.99 unlocks every song, forever. No subscription, nothing renews.
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