Help and questions

Chrome or Edge on a computer, headphones, and a way to get your instrument into the computer:

• An audio interface (Focusrite, Behringer, Audient…) with your guitar or bass plugged into input 1: the best.
• A USB guitar cable: works well and costs little.
• Your amp modeller or multi-effects (Helix, Kemper, POD, Boss GT…) over USB or into an interface: works; see Plugging in.
• A microphone for acoustic instruments.

Then open Practice, press Set up audio, use Test input to check the level, and calibrate.

Chrome and Edge are best. Firefox should work. Safari is best effort. Browsers only allow microphone access on secure (https) pages.

Every interface, driver and operating system adds a little delay between your strings and the browser. Gargoyle Studios can't remove it, but it can tell you where it comes from: open Your rig and press ⏱ Check latency. The usual causes, most likely first:

1. Sample rates don't match. Gargoyle Studios runs at 48 kHz. If your interface runs at 44.1 kHz, the system converts the audio, which adds delay. The latency check spots this and tells you exactly what to change.
2. A large buffer size in your interface's control app. Try 64 or 128 samples; go higher only if you hear crackles.
3. Windows "audio enhancements" on the input. Turn them off for your interface.
4. Bluetooth headphones add a lot of delay. Use wired headphones or your interface's headphone socket.

Delay never makes your timing look worse once you've calibrated: Gargoyle Studios measures it and corrects for it. It only affects how live it feels.

1. Open Settings → System → Sound → More sound settings.
2. On the Recording tab, select your interface → Properties → Advanced.
3. Choose 2 channel, 24 bit, 48000 Hz and press OK. Do the same for your headphones or speakers on the Playback tab.
4. If your interface has its own control app (for example Focusrite Control), set 48 kHz there too.
5. Reload BandSync.

On a Mac: open Audio MIDI Setup, select your interface and set its format to 48,000 Hz.

No browser can use ASIO; they use the normal Windows audio path, which adds roughly 10–30 ms. Keep the buffer small and the rates matched, and use your interface's direct monitor to hear yourself with no delay at all.

Every computer adds a small delay between a click leaving your headphones and your guitar's sound coming back in through the interface: the round trip, usually 10–40 ms. You play on the click you hear, so without correction every note you play looks that much late. Calibrating measures the round trip once per setup, and Gargoyle Studios takes it off: your score is fair, and your recorded takes line up with the beat exactly as you played them.

It has nothing to do with the internet. Your bandmates' connections never touch the timing of your playing (see band sessions).

1. Put your headphones on and set up your guitar or bass as you'll play it.
2. Press 🎸 Calibrate by playing. Mute the strings with your fretting hand.
3. You hear 4 clicks to find the beat, then hit the muted strings on each of the next 16 clicks: short, sharp, right on the click.

Gargoyle Studios times each strike against each click and takes the typical gap. It works with any instrument input: no cable, nothing to hear chirps. Do it again when you change interface, headphones or output.

Calibration plays a few chirps and listens for them on your instrument input, to measure the full round trip. So it depends on your setup:

• Audio interface: it can't hear your speakers through a guitar input. Connect a cable from the interface's output (or headphone socket) to a free input for a moment and calibrate, then unplug it.
• Microphone as the instrument input: hold a headphone ear cup against the mic and turn the volume up. Noise cancellation on the mic can swallow the chirps: turn it off in the mic's own software.
• Neither possible? Press Estimate. Gargoyle Studios adds up the delays your browser reports. It's less exact than a cable, but much better than nothing.

Your talk mic (a headset, say) is never used for calibration, so its noise cancellation doesn't matter there.

For the most accurate scoring, plug your instrument in clean (no distortion). Distortion adds harmonics that make notes harder to recognise. You don't have to give up your tone: pick a tone under Your sound in Your rig (or build your own on the pedalboard) and tick Hear my sound in both ears. Scoring and recording still use the clean signal. Already have a modeller or pedalboard? Choose My own sound and Gargoyle Studios adds nothing.

Bringing your own amp modeller or pedalboard is welcome too: plug its output straight in. Scoring on distorted guitars is being tuned; timing is judged reliably either way.

That's your interface's direct monitor: it sends input 1 to the left ear and input 2 to the right. Your recordings are fine (they're mono and play in both ears). Either press the interface's Mono button, route input 1 to both sides in its control app, or tick Hear my instrument in both ears in Your rig and turn the direct monitor down.

Browsers only see the channels your driver offers to Windows; many interfaces present their inputs in pairs. Plug into input 1 or 2, or check the interface's control app for a setting that exposes more channels.

Plug it into inputs 1 and 2 and choose Inputs 1+2 mixed under Input on the interface.

Every note in your part has a ±80 ms window around its beat, after your measured delay is taken off. Perfect, good and ok count as hits; wrong notes count against you; octave mistakes are forgiven. Accuracy is hits minus half the wrong notes, over all the notes.

Check the level with Test input (aim for "Good level"), tune up with the tuner, play clean, and calibrate. Chord recognition is approximate by design: it checks the chord's notes, not every string.

Yes, in two steps. Choose Realistic under Sounds (MuseScore General). Then open 🎛️ Sounds and tones: every part has a tone, like Guitar Pro's RSE effects. It runs the part through an amp, a speaker cabinet and effects (Blues crunch, Classic rock, Metal rhythm, Bass amp, Studio kit…). Each part starts on a tone that suits its sound, and driven tones play distorted guitars clean into the amp, which sounds far more real. Guitar Pro's own RSE sample banks are proprietary and can't be used outside Guitar Pro, so Gargoyle Studios builds the chain itself.

The cabinet is a speaker you can hear into: each one has its own cone breakup, and you can move the mic from the centre of the cone (bright) to its edge (warmer) and add some room. Rhythm tones like Classic rock and Metal rhythm are double-tracked, the way records are made: the part once on the left, again on the right. And the band stands on a stage: drums, bass and vocals in the middle, guitars left and right, keys opposite, so every part has its own space.

In Your rig, press 🎵 Tuner. It covers 6-, 7- and 8-string guitars, 4-, 5- and 6-string basses (with common alternate tunings) and any instrument in chromatic mode. It listens to the same input you play through.

Nobody's audio is streamed while you play. Each computer keeps a clock in step with the server, and the conductor's Play is scheduled 3 seconds ahead, so every browser starts the click and backing at the same moment. Between takes you talk over voice chat; talk mics mute automatically while the band plays.

No. Recording is entirely local, exactly like recording alone:

• Your click, the backing and the tab play on your computer, and your guitar is recorded on your computer, starting exactly at bar 1. You feel no delay beyond your own interface's.
• Nobody hears your instrument while you record, and you hear nobody's. Talk mics are muted from Play to Stop. Only voice is ever sent live, and only when you talk.
• When you stop, each take uploads with its timing. Every take is measured from its own bar 1 and corrected by its player's calibration, so they line up by the beat, whoever was where and however slow their internet was. A friend in London with a 200 ms connection lines up with you in Johannesburg to the millisecond.
• Then everyone hears the takes together, with a mixer to set each part's volume, pan, and nudge it a few milliseconds if needed.

So the timing you play locally, along with the tab and the click, is what counts. Calibrate once per setup so it's exact.

Click anywhere on the page once (browsers hold back sound until you do), check their volume slider in the people list, and make sure they have a talk mic chosen in their rig. Very strict networks can block direct connections; the band's admin can add a relay (TURN) server.

Once a band has recorded a take, press 🎛 Studio on it in the session room. It opens a full-screen console over the room, and everything in it runs in your browser:

• Lanes: a waveform for every player's take and the backing parts nobody recorded, each with volume, pan, mute and solo, and a nudge of a few milliseconds.
• Trim and fades: cut a take's start and end, with equal-power fades so edits never click.
• Comping: build one part from the best bars of several takes.
• Re-amp: every take is recorded clean, so you can put it through any tone, cabinet and pedalboard afterwards, as many times as you like.
• The master bus: EQ and a glue compressor over the whole mix.
• Exports: the mix as MP3 or Opus, or every clean stem, the backing and the mix as a ZIP to finish in any other program.
• Publish: offer the mix for your fan page. It only goes up once every player on it agrees, and any of them can take it down.

Edits are remembered per take on your computer, so you can come back to them while the session's takes still exist.

Some tools are earned band features: the band unlocks them by playing together (the band page's goals show what each one needs). A locked tool shows how to earn it. Nothing in the studio is for sale.

That's where Gargoyle Studios is going: the aim is that a band can write, record, produce and master a song without leaving. Today you record over a Guitar Pro tab, edit and mix the takes, and export. Arrangement from scratch, MIDI parts and virtual instruments, a mastering chain with loudness metering, and lyrics and chord sheets are on the roadmap, and they'll arrive in the same spirit: free for musicians, everything in your browser, nothing uploaded that doesn't need to be.

Promoters and venues apply, and an admin checks the business name and city before approving. They send gig offers (date, venue, set length, pay and backline) to a band's fan page. Each offer arrives in the band inbox as its own conversation, which every member and the manager reads. Any player can accept, decline or reply; accepting puts the gig on the band's schedule. Nobody in the band is ever contacted on their own.

Bands list the dates they're free, and promoters post the slots they need to fill. Filter by city and genre; everything is listed by date, never ranked. A band can say it's interested in a slot, and the promoter decides whether to send an offer. The board opens with your fan page, and uses the city and genres set there.

Your bio, up to 8 photos (shrunk in your browser, which also strips location data), a tech rider, and an availability calendar built from your open dates and booked gigs. It's on your fan page, so a promoter can decide in one place. Add photos and the rider on the fan page settings.

Gargoyle Studios never asks for payment in messages, and promoters agree not to either; messages mentioning money are flagged. Block the promoter from the offer's conversation, and report the offer or the person ("A gig not honoured" covers no-shows and unpaid gigs). Every offer, decision and message is on the record, and admins can suspend or ban.

An email (to sign in, never shown), a display name, an optional picture, your instruments, and your practice numbers. Audio stays on your computer unless you record a band take. No ads, no tracking, no algorithm. You can download or delete everything from your data page.