Tuner & Metronome
Two tools you reach for before every take. Both are built into homecrate, both work standalone, and both use the same audio engine as the recorder — so you can tune through the interface you’re actually recording with, and drive external gear from the same clock your song runs on.
Opening Them
| Tool | Where |
|---|---|
| Tuner | The Tuner pill on the home screen, or ⋯ menu → Tuner inside the recorder |
| Metronome | The Metro pill on the home screen |
[SCREENSHOT: Home screen header pills — Amp, Tuner, Metro]
The tuner is disabled while you’re recording, so it can’t fight with the take in progress. Everything else is available any time.
The Tuner
A chromatic tuner that listens through whichever input you choose and tells you how far off you are, in cents.
[SCREENSHOT: Tuner with the needle dial, note readout, and cents bar]
The Three Modes
Tabs across the top:
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Chromatic | Detects whatever note you play and shows the nearest one. No target, no assumptions — good for anything |
| Guitar | Adds the six standard guitar strings as buttons. Highlights the string you’re closest to |
| Custom | Your own saved tunings, with any number of strings 🔒 |
Reading the Display
- The big note name with its octave, and the detected frequency in Hz underneath.
- The cents readout —
+7¢,−12¢, or In Tune. Anything within 4 cents counts as in tune and the whole display turns green. - The cents bar below the dial, flat on the left, sharp on the right.
Above the dial there are three small controls:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Input picker | Choose which input to listen to — built-in mic, an interface, a specific channel |
| Gain | Boost a quiet source, 0.5× to 4× |
| Signal | A live meter so you can see the tuner is actually hearing you |
Needle and Strobe
The dial has two faces. Long-press the dial to switch between them; the label underneath tells you which one you’re on.
| Display | Feel |
|---|---|
| ◉ Needle | A classic swinging needle. Immediate and readable — the fast way to get close |
| ◎ Strobe | A rotating strobe disc, like a rack strobe tuner. It drifts one way when you’re sharp and the other when you’re flat, and stands still when you’re exactly right |
Strobe mode is the finer instrument of the two. Use the needle to get in the neighbourhood, then switch to strobe to settle intonation, set a floating bridge, or match a pair of strings precisely.
Guitar Mode
Six string buttons — E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, E4. The one nearest your pitch highlights automatically as you play.
Tap a string to lock it. Locking targets that string specifically, so a badly-out-of-tune string won’t get read as its neighbour and send you the wrong way. Tap it again to unlock.
Chord Detection
Strum rather than pick one note and the tuner recognises the chord and shows its name.
[SCREENSHOT: Tuner showing a detected chord with the neighbouring chord suggestions]
Two dimmer badges sit either side of the detected chord with related chords — useful when you’re working out where a progression is going and want a suggestion that fits the key.
While a chord is detected, the string buttons for notes that belong to it are highlighted, so you can see which strings are actually sounding.
Custom Tunings
🔒 Pro feature. Custom tunings are available with Homecrate Pro. Free users get Chromatic and Guitar modes in full.
The Custom tab holds your own tunings — any number of strings, any pitches. Build one string by string in the editor, or describe what you want (“Open G for slide guitar”, “DADGAD”, “C6 lap steel”) and let homecrate work it out on-device.
Tunings can be built for:
| Instrument | Default strings |
|---|---|
| Guitar 6 / 7 / 8 | 6, 7, 8 |
| Lap steel 6 / 8 / 10 | 6, 8, 10 |
| Pedal steel E9 / C6 | 10 |
Saved tunings stay in the Custom tab. Apply one and its strings appear as buttons exactly like guitar mode — including string locking and chord-member highlighting. Edit reopens the editor; the trash icon deletes.
Concert Pitch
At the bottom, A = sets your reference pitch: 432, 440, 441, 442, 443, or 444 Hz. Everything the tuner reports shifts with it. Leave it at 440 unless you’re playing with an ensemble that tunes elsewhere.
The Metronome
[SCREENSHOT: Metronome with the analog needle, BPM readout, and TAP button]
Setting the Tempo
Three ways, whichever suits:
- Type it. Tap the BPM number and enter one.
- TAP. Tap the square in time with what’s in your head — homecrate averages your taps into a tempo.
- Follow an external clock. See MIDI Sync below.
The Analog Needle
The dial is a real pendulum, not an animation loop. It swings at the tempo you set, and the centre segments light as the needle sweeps past vertical so you can catch the beat with your eyes as well as your ears.
It’s also a control. Pull the needle over to the side and let go — like winding a mechanical metronome’s arm — and it starts on the swing back through centre, in time.
Two pendulum behaviours, under the MIDI settings button:
| Style | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Traditional | Swings at the quarter-note rate, like a physical metronome |
| Digital | Tracks every beat in the time signature |
Time Signature, Subdivision, and Accents
Set any time signature from the picker. The accent pattern resizes to match.
Subdivisions split each beat:
| Subdivision | Clicks per beat |
|---|---|
| Quarter | One — the beat itself |
| Eighth | Two |
| Triplet | Three |
| 16th | Four |
| Swing | Two, swung |
| 32nd | Six |
| Quint | Five |
Each beat in the bar has its own accent level — strong, medium, weak, or muted — so you can click a 7/8 bar the way it’s actually grouped, or mute beats 2 and 4 to force yourself to keep time between them. Each accent level can have its own pitch, or a custom sample of your own instead of a click.
Presets
Save any combination — tempo, time signature, subdivision, accent pattern, and click sounds — as a named preset, and recall it in one tap. Each preset lists its tempo and time signature so a set list is easy to scan.
[SCREENSHOT: Metronome preset list showing saved tempos]
This is what makes it useful live: one preset per song, tap through them as you go.
MIDI Clock
The metronome can be the clock for your whole setup, or follow someone else’s.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Clock Out | Sends MIDI clock to every connected device. Your drum machine, pedals, and synth arpeggiators lock to the metronome’s tempo |
| Sync to External Clock | Follows incoming MIDI clock instead. The tempo display shows what’s being received, and external start / continue / stop messages start and stop the metronome |
[SCREENSHOT: MIDI settings panel with Clock Out and Sync to External Clock switches]
While Sync to External Clock is on, the tempo is coming from outside — TAP and manual BPM entry are disabled, because the external clock is in charge.
The Count-In
Inside the recorder, the metronome also does the counting.
- The metronome button in the transport bar toggles the click on and off during playback and recording.
- Tapping Record plays a count-in of one measure at the project’s tempo and time signature, with a large on-screen countdown, before recording starts. The count-in itself is trimmed off the recording — your take begins where you started playing, not where the counting did.
The Looper has its own COUNT option that works the same way for loop takes.
Tips
- Tune through the interface you’ll record with. Pick the same input in the tuner’s device picker. A pickup reads differently than a room mic, and you want to tune what the take will actually hear.
- Needle first, strobe second. Get within a few cents on the needle, then switch to strobe to finish. Trying to land a strobe from a long way out is slow.
- Lock the string when it’s badly flat. A very out-of-tune low E can read as an E♭, and you’ll tune the wrong way. Locking removes the ambiguity.
- Retune after big bends and a capo. Both move you more than you’d think, especially on a floating bridge.
- Set the accent pattern to how you actually count. A 7/8 bar counted 3+2+2 with strong accents in the right places is far easier to play to than seven identical clicks.
- Mute a beat to test yourself. Muting beats 2 and 4 shows very quickly whether your time is genuinely solid or just following the click.
- One preset per song. Building your set as presets means no fumbling with the BPM field between numbers.
- Clock Out before you record. If a hardware sequencer needs to run with your take, turn on Clock Out first so everything starts from one tempo.