Console View

The Console view is the view that you get when you start a Napo app and which you use most of the time while playing the organ. Besides the organ-specific knobs (stops and maybe couplers and tremulants) in the mid, it offers a general volume control at the left and several buttons at the right. Whenever possible, the Console view is designed to match the look of the stops board of the real organ console. As an example, look at the Console view of MenzelOrgan. This organ has five manual ranks, each divided in a bass and a diskant stop, a pedal rank and a tremulant. Compare the Console view (left) to Lars Palo's photo of the real stops board (right):

At the beginning you might find the visual discrimination between active and inactive stops to be difficult, but, like with a real instrument, this is a matter of practice. Furthermore, being the organist, you know and you hear which stops you have pulled, don't you? Anyway, you can select an Abstract console style in the Settings view. For example for PiteaMini it looks like this:

Before explaining the buttons at the right, let's talk about Napo's combination mechanism.

A combination is a set of knob settings (stops, couplers, tremulants) of the organ. It allows for fast registration changes while playing. In Napo, combinations are organised in combination banks. The intention is that you create a combination bank for a piece of organ music and in this bank create combinations for the parts of this piece, in the ordering in which you need them. Then, while playing the piece, you can use the + button to step through the combinations. This stepper functionality can also be controlled via MIDI.

The number of combination banks and combinations is not restricted. A bank can be created by long-tapping the Bank button. When there are banks, you can select a bank after short-tapping this button. When a bank is selected, you can create a combination for this bank from the current stops setting of the Console view by long-tapping the Comb. button, and select a combination from this bank after short-tapping this button. For editing functionality, use the Combinations view.

Now the description of the Console view's buttons:

Notes Off: This button switches all playing notes off and might be useful if you have an unreliable MIDI connection and suffer from stuck notes.
Stops Off: This button switches all stops and as well all couplers and all tremulants off.
Demo Off: This button is visible while a demo song is playing. Tap to stop the demo.
Detach Stops: After tapping this button, you can operate the stop, coupler and tremulant knobs, but the changes won't take effect until you tap the button (which is then labelled Attach Stops) once more. This allows registration changes during playing, for later use.
+: This button is visible after you have selected a non-empty combination bank. Tap to switch to the next combination of the bank.
-: This button is visible after you have selected a non-empty combination bank. Tap to switch to the previous combination of the bank.
Comb., Bank: The usage of these buttons has been explained above.
Blower: You see this button only if the app includes an audio file with blower noise. Tap the button to turn the blower noise on and off.
Start Rec.: Tap this button to start the internal audio recorder. The Console view icon indicated this by getting a red color, and the Start Rec. button's label changes to Stop Rec.. Press the button again to finish the recording. You will be asked if you would like to save or to delete the recording. If you save, then the recording will be put in a WAV file in the app's documents directory, with a file name that is built from the current date and time. Change to the Recordings view to listen to or to rename the recording.

The fact that there is a dedicated volume control which does not affect the system volume deserves an explanation. There are several reasons for the existence of this control:

An obvious use case for the application is to let the iOS Music application render a piece from your music library and to accompany this by yourself playing the organ. Then you need to adapt the volume of the organ to the system volume / Music application volume.
A pipe organ has an incredibly large dynamic range. The volume slider is calibrated such that 'normal' organ pieces can be played at maximum volume setting without distortion of the sound. However, when you play some esoteric stuff with clusters of notes and many stops, then the sound will overdrive. In this case the volume is reduced automatically – you will see the volume control sliding down by a certain amount. However, this is not a dynamic range compression (nobody wants dynamic range compression, really). When you play the piece the next time, you yourself can adjust the volume slider at the beginning and compensate this by increasing the system volume or the volume of your external amplifer.
The system volume control does not operate on the line output e.g. of an iPad dock. Using the app's volume control you can still adjust the volume to your needs.
When you use the app's internal audio recorder, you turn up the volume to a value that gives the recording a high recording level. Now if your headphones are very sensitive, this level may be uncomfortably loud. Using the device's volume buttons you can lower the headphone volume without reducing the recording level.
When using an external USB soundcard with a digital audio output, the system volume control might not work. This is a problem if you use active speakers with digital inputs and no volume control. The volume slider helps in this case.

The volume can also be controlled via MIDI. You need to configure this functionality in the Settings view. You will see the Console view's volume slider move when you operate the external volume slider or swell pedal that you have linked to the general volume.

Other functions (stops, couplers, tremulants, combination selection) can be controlled via MIDI, too. Once again, use the Settings view to configure this.

Napo 4.0 brings support for onscreen keyboards. When you are in the Console view, you can toggle between the normal display and the keyboard display by tapping the Console view icon. Onscreen keyboards make most sense on an iPad in landscape mode. As an example, this is the keyboards mode of PiteaMini:

Here, the upper keyboard is the manual, the lower keyboard plays the pedal stops. Both can be scrolled horizontally by dragging the grey strip. The stops can be scrolled, too. The empty space between Trumpet 8' and Subbas 16' is well suited to grab it for scrolling, but you can also swipe buttons if you have deactivated Multitasking Gestures in your device settings. This is recommended anyway if you use the virtual keyboard, because otherwise there is the risk to switch apps when you play a chord and move your fingers.

The lock symbols that you can see at the right end of the grey strips are a new feature of Napo 4.1. When you tap a lock, the currently pressed keys of the corresponding keyboard get fixed. A fixed key is released only when you tap it again (or tap the Notes Off button).

It has turned out that some users would prefer direct access to a small collection of combinations over the bank/combination system. Hence Napo 4.4 offers an alternative combination handling in the form of buttons A,B,C,D,E:

These buttons are displayed if you choose ABCDE in the Settings view at Appearance / Combination Mode. You can save a combination by long-tapping one of the buttons and recall it by normal tapping. The A,B,C,D,E combinations are completely independent of the bank/combination system.