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Prest

What Prest is

Prest is a desktop app that opens a song or a project and plays it on a timeline. It has three parts in one window:

  • The timeline. Prest draws the project as lanes: its tracks and clips, sections, chords, lyrics, and tempo map, with a mixer under them. It plays the project, and you can change the song’s form while it plays: repeat a section, skip one, hold one round, or stop after one. See The timeline and Play a show.
  • PresTools’ tools. Separate, Tempo, Chords, Lyrics, Transcribe, and Correct each have a button on the toolbar and open in a window over the timeline. The timeline keeps playing and scrolling under them, and what they find lands in its lanes. See PresTools in Prest.
  • Prest Server. Prest serves the stage screens from what it plays. Phones, tablets, and other computers on the band’s private network follow the song, control the transport, and open songs from setlists; with Prest they also show and change the song’s form and the mix. See Stage screens.

PresTools and Prest Server are part of Prest, so there is nothing else to install. Each is also released on its own for REAPER, and Prest Server for Ableton Live: see the Prest Server documentation and PresTools for REAPER.

The window

Section titled “The window”

From top to bottom:

  • The status line: the latest message, or what the control under the pointer does. Click it to see the recent messages.
  • Tabs, once two or more projects are open. Each project has its own transport, so several can play at once.
  • The toolbar: the file commands, undo and redo, snapping, the mixer and score buttons, the transport and its readout, PresTools’ tools, zoom, ? (how Prest works, and its keys), and the gear (Settings).
  • The form strip, once the song has sections: the sections in the order they play.
  • The lanes, and under them the score and the mixer when you show them.

What Prest opens

Section titled “What Prest opens”
  • Songs: WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC (.m4a, .aac: AAC-LC and ALAC), FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis. Opus, CAF, HE-AAC, and surround AAC files are not played; Prest says so.
  • Prest projects (.prest), which Prest saves.
  • REAPER projects (.rpp), Ableton Live sets (.als, from Live 10 to 12), and DAWproject files (.dawproject), as new untitled projects. Prest also exports a project in each of these formats. See Projects and files.
  • MIDI files (.mid, .midi), added to the song. See MIDI.
  • MusicXML scores (.musicxml, .mxl, and .xml files that are MusicXML), added to the song. See Scores.

What Prest does not do

Section titled “What Prest does not do”
  • It does not record.
  • It plays no effects, instruments, or plug-ins. A REAPER project’s FX are kept for the way back to REAPER, but they are not heard. MIDI tracks send to your MIDI devices; they make no sound in Prest.
  • It does not use ASIO on Windows or JACK on Linux. It plays through the system’s own audio: on Linux, ALSA.
  • It does not start the next project when one ends, or crossfade between projects.

Systems

Section titled “Systems”
  • macOS 13 or later, on a Mac with Apple silicon or Intel. One app runs on both.
  • Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit (x86-64), with the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime, which Windows 10 and 11 have.
  • Linux with WebKitGTK 4.1, GTK 3, and ALSA installed.

Prest’s window is at least 1000 × 600.

PresTools’ models run on the GPU on Apple silicon, and on Windows and Linux on an NVIDIA GPU with NVIDIA’s libraries installed. Elsewhere, Intel Macs included, they run on the CPU, more slowly. See Where the tools run.

Next: Install Prest.