Play a show

Keyboard shortcuts use ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl on Windows and Linux.

The transport

To	Do
Play, or pause	Press Space, or choose the play button on the toolbar
Go to the start, or the end	Press Home or Enter, or End
Go a bar back, or on	Press ← or →
Play from somewhere else	Click the timeline there; playing goes on from that point
Queue the next or previous section	Press ↓ or ↑ (see Change the form)

Play starts at the playhead. Pause keeps the place, and Space plays on from it.

The readout beside the transport shows where the playhead is: bar.beat.sixteenth, the section and chord there, minutes and seconds, and the tempo and time signature. Until the song has a tempo map, it counts bars at 120 BPM in 4/4, dimmed.

Several projects

Each open project has a tab once two or more are open, above the toolbar. Open more with ⌘O, or make a new one with ⌘N or + at the end of the tabs.

• Click a tab, or press ⌃Tab and ⌃⇧Tab (or ⇧⌘] and ⇧⌘[), to bring the next or previous project in front. ▾ lists every open project; with many, the strip scrolls.
• Each project has its own transport. Bringing another tab in front stops nothing: a project plays on until you pause it. A play or pause sign on a tab shows it playing or paused.
• Every project that plays is heard, mixed to the one audio device, and sends its MIDI.
• The rest follows the tab in front: the keys, the toolbar’s transport and readout, the playhead, the mixer and its meters, MIDI clock and song position, and the stage screens.
• Up to 16 projects play at once. Playing a 17th says 16 projects are playing, the most heard at once: stop one first.
• Closing a tab stops its project.

Prest does not start one project when another ends, or crossfade between them.

Change the form while it plays

Once the song has sections (the Sections lane), the form strip under the toolbar shows them in the order they play. With no form saved, each section plays once, in time order.

Jump to a section. Click it in the strip while the song plays: it plays next. It pulses until the jump, and says how far away it is (“in 2 bars”, “in 1 beat”). Click it again, or press Escape, to let it go. ⇧-click jumps at once. When the song is stopped, a click moves the playhead to that section.

When the jump happens is set by the switch beside the strip:

Switch	Jumps
Section	At the end of the section playing (the default): never in the middle of a line
Bar	On the next bar line
Beat	On the next beat
Now	At once

The switch is saved with the project.

Keys and pedals. ↓ and ↑, or Page Down and Page Up, queue the section after or before; a page-turner pedal sends these keys. V vamps, E stops after, Escape lets a queued jump go.

Vamp. The vamp button (V) holds the section playing round until you press it again; then it plays on after that time round.

Stop after. The stop button (E) stops at the end of the section playing. The strip says when (“Stops in 2 bars”). Press it again to play on.

Each section’s menu sets how it plays:

• Once, Twice, 3 times, or 4 times.
• Hold round until let go: it repeats until you queue another section.
• Skip: it is left out, and shown struck through.
• Play it again after itself: adds a repeat of it. Take out this repeat removes one again.
• Move earlier, Move later.

While a section repeats, its chip shows the pass, such as 2/3.

Keep or undo the changes. What you change in the strip is for this time through. ✓ (Keep the form as it plays now with the project) makes it the project’s form, saved when you save the project. The arrows (Back to the form the project has) undo the changes. Stopping lets go of a queued jump, a vamp, and a stop after, but a changed form stays until you keep it or go back.

How it sounds and what follows:

• A jump is made on time, with a 10 ms crossfade. The metronome carries on from the bar it lands in.
• MIDI out lets its notes go at a jump, and sends what is in force where it lands: bank, program, and controllers.
• After the form’s last section, what comes after the last section on the timeline plays; sections left out of the form do not.
• The stage screens show the form too, and can change it. See The song’s form on the Performance page.
• A project exported to REAPER, Live, or DAWproject keeps its timeline as it is, not its form.

Guide tracks

A track whose name has the word Guide, Guides, Cue, or Cues in it, such as “Guide” or “Click + Guide”, holds the band’s spoken cues. Before a jump, it plays the bar before the section the jump goes to, so you hear the cue for where you are going: “chorus” before a chorus played again, not “bridge” before a bridge you skipped.

Loop a range

Drag across the timeline to pick a range, then press L or choose the loop button. Press L again to stop looping. The range, and whether it loops, are saved with the project.

Metronome and count-in

The metronome (C, or the metronome button) clicks on the tempo map’s beats, higher on each bar’s first beat. It needs a tempo map: detect beats with the Tempo tool first.

• Whether it is on is saved with each project. A song, or a project whose file does not say, starts with the metronome as you last set it. Turning it on or off does not make the project unsaved on its own.
• Where it is heard and how loud are this computer’s settings: Settings → Audio, Metronome and Metronome volume (up to +6 dB). Give it outputs of its own to keep the click out of what the audience hears.

The count-in is the menu with the metronome icon in the form strip, which shows once the song has sections: No count-in, Count in a bar, or Count in two bars. Before playing starts, Prest clicks those bars in the tempo and time signature there, on the metronome’s outputs, even with the metronome off. The count-in is this computer’s setting, for every project.

MIDI clock

MIDI clock and song position follow the tab in front and start and stop with its transport. Choose which ports get them in a MIDI track’s Output… dialog: see MIDI clock.

The stage screens

Prest Server shows the project in front, and its screens control it: the transport, the form, and the mix. See Stage screens and The Performance page.

Next: The timeline.