Quick Preview For Magic Chord and Bass Collections
Magic Chord is one of Hookpad’s most beloved features – ask Hookpad for the best chord to use in any context and Hookpad shows you what other other famous songs have done. Now magic chord has a “quick preview” option which plays the suggested chord and neighboring chords in quick succession. The original full preview option with melody is still available.
2.5x More Responsive
Hookpad 2.6 includes many under-the-hood optimizations that make Hookpad more responsive. Our benchmarks show:
- 3.1x faster drag-selection
- 4.5x faster note adding
- 2.6x faster note editing
You will still see small (< 500 ms) delays with operations that require full reflows of a complex score, but overall, we are quite happy with performance. Details of benchmarking are included at the end of this article.
20% Faster App Launch
With Hookpad 2.6, we shaved 20% from the gzipped app bundle, (765 KB now vs 945 KB before) so you get 20% faster app launches.
Menus Now Consistent With Native Apps
We changed a few menus to be more consistent with native apps.
- Settings top-level menu moved to Hookpad → Settings
- MIDI top-level menu moved to Hookpad → Midi Settings
- Hookpad → About Hookpad now shows version info and has a link to the release notes.
Hookpad Player Now Correctly Lays Out Scores with Pickup Measures
We updated the Hookpad player to correctly layout scores with pickup measures
15 New Electronic Instruments and Effects
We have been working hard on a new electronic instrument pack for Hookpad and are excited to release the following new instruments.
New Lead Instruments
- Electric Piano (smart and legato)
- Electric Piano Dark (smart and legato)
- Dark Lead (smart and legato)
New Lead Synth FX
- Drop 1-bar
- Drop 2-bar
- Rise 1-bar
- Rise 2-bar
- Noise
New Harmony Instruments / Rhythms
- Electric Piano
- Dark Piano
- Syncopation Pad
- Brassopad Offbeaat 1/8s
- Supersaw Pad
- Supersaw Pumping Pad
- Metal guitar Rock 1/8s 2
- Metal guitar Rock 1/8s 3
- Metal guitar Backbeat 1/8s
- Metal Guitar Gallops
- Metal Guitar Gallops 2
- Metal Guitar Open 1/16s
- Metal Guitar Muted 1/16s
New Bass Instruments
- Deep Winds
- Dark Bass
- Brassobasso
- Acid Bass
- Acid Pluck
- Bowed String Bass Deep
- Supersaw Bass
- Alternating Thumb Bass
Hardware and Software Configuration For Performance Benchmarks
- MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)
- 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5
- 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
- macOS 10.14.6 (Mojave)
- Browser: Chrome 76
- Hookpad is loaded with Arcade Madness (a demo song) at global zoom of 50% and horizontal zoom of 58% to provide a challenging use case.
- All comparisons use Chrome performance profiler for benchmarking. Hookpad 2.6 is compared to Hookpad 2.5
- Absolute performance data is likely better than shown below because of overhead with the profiler in Chrome.
3.1x Faster Drag-Selection (12.5 FPS vs. 4 FPS)
To perform this test, I drag-selected a melody and chord region in Arcade Madness and recorded frames per second (FPS) in chrome profiler
4.5x Faster Note Adding (29 notes per second vs. 6.7 notes per second)
To perform this test I held down the “1” key for five seconds to enter notes in rapid succession. macOS has a “Key Repeat” setting in System Preferences that I set to “Fast” to push Hookpad as much as possible.
- In Hookpad 2.6, 158 notes are processed in real time over five seconds while holding down the “1” key.
- In Hookpad 2.5, 152 notes are entered, but it takes 22.6 seconds to process the 5-second key-press event: 5 seconds while holding the “1” key plus 17.6 seconds of processing / painting after releasing the “1” key
2.6x Faster Note Editing (100 ms vs. 260 ms)
To perform this test I selected a note and then shifted it by a scale degree with the up key.
Summary of Hookpad 2.6 Benefits
- New quick preview option for magic chord suggestions
- 15 new electronic instruments and effects
- 2.5x more responsive
- 20% faster app launch
- Menus are more consistent with native apps