CHARTBLAZER:DRUMS chart · mark up · play

Release notes

What’s new in ChartBlazer

Every user-facing change, newest first.

v1.2.0

Sized for the tablet — the gig stage, and the type on it

  • Your setlist goes where you want it. A new control on the gig bar puts it above the chart as a strip you swipe, down the left as a column, or away altogether — and remembers the choice on that device. Above the chart is the new default, because that is where the chart gets the room: on a tablet held in portrait it is the difference between a chart 480 pixels wide and one 752 pixels wide, and the notation takes every one of them.
  • A gig opens properly on a phone now. The setlist used to hold on to its fixed column even on a 390-pixel screen — about a hundred pixels left for the chart, and the page sliding sideways. It lies down as a strip instead, the bar keeps its buttons but drops their labels, and the whole set fits on the screen.
  • The setlist scrolls by arrows, never a scrollbar — sideways when it sits above the chart, up and down when it sits beside it. Paging with a swipe or the ← / → keys now slides the song you have landed on into view, so a long set stops showing you songs 1 to 5 while you are playing song 12.
  • The prev/next arrows step aside on a touchscreen, where a swipe already turns the page — that is another 88 pixels of width straight to the chart. They stay put on a mouse, which has no swipe.
  • Bigger targets where you are holding sticks. The reorder and remove buttons on each song in the setlist measured 18 pixels tall; they are 40 now, and every control on the gig bar grew with them.
  • Less furniture above the music. The gig bar is shorter and tighter, and on a tablet — or any window short of room — the tagline under the wordmark steps aside. Roughly 40 pixels of screen handed back on the gig stage, a little on every other page, and the pull-tab still folds the lot away when you want nothing but chart.
  • Section titles and note text are on separate knobs. One control used to move both, so making the section names big enough to read from behind the kit blew up every cue and note with them. Tap the percentage between A− and A+ in the title line and you get two: Titles — the section name and bar count, and the notation with them — and Text, the cues column and your note lines. Each section can then go its own way from its ⋯ menu, which now offers title, text and grooves where it offered two.
  • A− and A+ themselves are unchanged: one tap still sizes the whole chart, notation included. The split is there when you want it and out of the way when you don’t — the title line is exactly as tall as it was, at every screen width. Charts you had already sized open looking the same, so there is nothing to redo, and a couple of things that never grew with the rest of the chart now do: the bar range beside each groove, and the description at the top.
  • Print uses the page properly now. The chart card was drawing its own margin inside the page margin, so almost an inch of every side was white before a note appeared — a fifth of the sheet. It is half that now, and the extra goes to the notation. Printing also honours the size you set: size a chart up to read it and the print and the PDF come out at that size, instead of always at 100%.
  • The energy meter went from ten segments to five. Ten was more resolution than the meter could ever say — the tooltip has always named five levels, from very light to full-out — and it was eating half the width of a section’s header line. Charts you have already marked up keep the level they read as: a section that said "strong" still says "strong".
  • The section controls you reach for most — move up, move down, insert, duplicate, delete — sit on the section header now whenever there is room for them, instead of behind the ⋯ every time. On a narrow screen, or in two columns where a section is only a few hundred pixels wide, they stay in the menu.
  • Fixed: a section’s ⋯ button and its menu escaping their column in the two-column layout on a tablet — the button drifted into the next column or off the page entirely, and the menu opened the wrong way off the edge. Both stay inside the section now, at every width. Two columns also lay themselves back down as one on a phone, where two of them left a chart too narrow to read.
v1.1.0

Room to work, and controls that stay put

  • Cut time is real now. Set a chart to 2/2 and the metronome counts two big beats to the bar instead of four, a new groove comes in beamed 4+4 the way cut time reads, and the staff shows the signature instead of passing the bar off as 4/4.
  • The click divides the bar exactly in every meter you can type. A handful of unusual signatures — 7/16, 9/16 and friends — used to get a click that didn’t quite fit the bar, so the accented "1" slowly walked around it. Whatever you put in Custom now counts out evenly, every bar.
  • The groove editor’s grid shows the beats. A line now marks each beat inside the bar — on a 16th grid that’s a line every four pads — so you can find beat 3 without counting pads. The lines follow the meter: in 6/8 they mark the two big beats, exactly the way the bar is beamed.
  • One meter list everywhere. The chart header and the groove editor now offer the same eight signatures — 2/2, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 6/8, 7/8, 12/8 — so the signature you pick on the chart always lights up its preset in the editor. Anything rarer lives in Custom, counted just as exactly, and charts already using one keep it.
  • Charts can use the whole screen. On a tablet in landscape — a Kindle Fire, an iPad — the page used to sit boxed in the middle with dead space down both sides. A new Page width choice in the View menu (Normal, Wide, Full) lets the chart fill the room you have; it is remembered on each device and works while you edit as well as read.
  • The title bar stays with you. Scroll deep into a long chart and the View/Edit toggle, the size steppers, the print button — and, while editing, the pen and colour swatches — no longer slide off the top. They stay put wherever you are reading: your own charts, the gig stage, and the sample editor.
  • Colour lives on the markup bar now. With the pen selected the swatches ink your strokes; with Select on they colour text — a title, a cue, or just a few words. Black is the default and clears colour back off. The section palette was refreshed to eight colours, the pen carries its own six inks, and the highlighter has a cleaner yellow.
  • The gig stage gives the chart room to breathe. Your setlist now runs down the left instead of across the top, the gig name and the song’s cue share one bar, and everything above the chart stays put while you scroll — roughly a third of the screen handed back to the music. One tap on the pull-tab folds the lot away, setlist included, for the biggest chart a phone or tablet can show.
  • Sections are numbered now — 1., 2., 3. down the chart, beside each name like an ordered list — and they renumber themselves the moment you reorder, add or remove a section.
  • Editing and reading are the same page now, down to the pixel. The editor used to lay a chart out a little differently from the way it prints and plays on stage — a placeholder line where an empty note sat, a row of size buttons above the grooves, edit buttons widening every staff — so a circle drawn around a groove could sit off its mark the moment you switched to View. All of it is gone: the chart you mark up is the chart you read.
  • Two columns is a layout now, not just a way to read. You can build a chart in two columns instead of laying it out in one and hoping it still works — so a chart headed for two columns on stage gets designed that way, pen marks and all. Page width behaves the same in both modes.
  • Pen marks and highlights no longer print, and the Print menu no longer offers them. They were coming out slightly off the mark, and fixing that properly would have meant shrinking every printed chart by about a third — notation and all — to reproduce the screen exactly. A chart you can actually read on a music stand matters more, so printing keeps filling the page and markup stays where it is exact: on screen, on the gig stage, and on your tablet.
  • Every section’s controls tuck into one ⋯ button beside its name — size, reorder, duplicate, colour, delete — and the groove edit and delete buttons moved off the staff line into the space beside the bar count. An empty note line no longer shows a placeholder either: press "+ note" when you want one, and it folds away again if you leave it blank. Less furniture, more music, and the same page whether you are writing it or playing from it.
  • The Description box keeps what you typed. An ampersand used to come back as "&" after a reload, and anything you wrote in angle brackets could vanish from the box entirely. Descriptions now save exactly as written — and charts that were already garbled read correctly again on their next open, nothing to retype.
v1.0.0

ChartBlazer is live

  • ChartBlazer: Drums has a home — chartblazer.com. Everything below this line was built in the open over the past months; from here on, this is the real thing: your charts, your setlists, and a community library of over two hundred charts ready to browse, clone and make your own.
  • PDF export no longer tacks a blank page onto the end of a chart. Whether a chart tripped it was down to luck — its exact height on the page — and a setlist could catch the same blank between songs.
  • Cancelling a subscription now says what it means: your account page shows exactly when Pro access ends and that you won’t be charged again, instead of claiming the plan would renew. (The billing itself was always right — the page wasn’t.)
v0.16.0

The setlist gets a cover page

  • Printing a gig now opens with a cover page: the gig name, date and venue, then the whole running order — each song with its tempo and your transition cue on one line. The sound tech gets the set at a glance; you get your count-ins without flipping pages. Works in browser print and the Pro PDF alike.
  • The FAQ now answers the question everyone asks after browsing community charts: why doesn't this match the record? Because a chart here is one drummer's map of one arrangement — reminders for the gig, not a transcription — and the FAQ says so out loud.
  • For everyone publishing charts: the copyright page and Terms now name our registered copyright agent and walk through the counter-notice path, so a takedown — or a mistaken one — has a real, named route.
v0.15.0

Your inbox, your call

  • You decide whether we email you about new features. Settings has a switch for product news, every one of those emails carries an unsubscribe link that works without signing in, and turning it off never touches the email that keeps your account running — verification, password resets, and anything about your subscription still reach you.
  • Email from ChartBlazer looks like ChartBlazer now — properly laid out, readable on a phone, and no longer inverted into mush by dark mode.
v0.14.1

Saves you can trust

  • Leaving a chart no longer races your last edit. Swiping to the next song on stage, heading back to your list, or closing the tab used to silently drop anything typed in the final moment — the chart now saves on the way out, and the "✓ saved" badge only shows when everything is actually on the server. If closing the tab really would lose work — you're offline, or a save already failed — the browser asks before letting the page go.
  • Undo tells the truth in notes now. Pressing ⌘Z after typing a cue used to revert the chart invisibly: the screen kept the old text, and touching the note could quietly write it back. What you see after an undo is now exactly what the chart says, in note lines and markup text notes alike.
  • Undoing while the groove editor is open no longer disconnects it — taps kept "working" on a groove that was no longer in the chart, and vanished when you closed the editor.
  • On the gig stage, a save lands on the song it belongs to. Renaming a chart and swiping onward could stamp the new title onto whichever song you had swiped to.
  • Chart pages arrive faster: the notation engine now ships only the one music font it engraves with, cutting that download nearly in half.
  • Big charts feel lighter in the hand. Undo redraws only the section it changed instead of re-engraving every groove, and A− / A+ zoom taps land immediately — the text scales at once and the notation follows the moment you stop tapping.
  • Ink stays where you drew it: markup no longer stretches out of place when its section grows or the layout switches columns.
  • The groove editor behaves as a proper dialog for keyboard users — focus stays inside while it is open and returns to where you were when it closes.
v0.14.0

Links worth sending

  • A link to one of your public charts finally shows something to someone who isn't signed in — the title, artist, genre, tempo, meter and how many sections it runs, plus a real preview card when the link lands in a text or a post. It used to drop them on a login screen with no clue what was on the other side. The chart itself still needs an account, so your notation isn't being handed out.
  • You can share a chart with specific people by handle or email. They can read it and take their own copy; the original stays yours to edit. Creating a share is a Pro feature — receiving one, and copying it, is free for everyone.
  • If a card payment fails, you hear it from us now: an email with a link to update the card, and a notice in the app. Pro keeps working while your bank retries, nothing locks, and your charts stay yours either way.
  • A reminder a week before a free trial runs out, so the last day isn't a surprise.
  • Comments arrive with the chart instead of a beat behind it.
  • Installing ChartBlazer on a phone or tablet no longer pulls down the whole drum-sample kit up front — the sounds load the first time you press play.
  • Answers are easier to find: the common questions now live on their own FAQ page you can link straight to, and the app bar has a Help link that gets you to it, the user guide, or us.
v0.13.1

Print what you see

  • Printing and PDF export now follow the layout you are actually reading in — pick two columns and that is what comes out, on a single chart and on a whole setlist. It used to quietly print one column unless you reloaded the page first.
  • A marked-up chart printed in two columns no longer wastes a sheet: the ink used to come out alone on page one with the chart behind it on page two.
  • On the gig stage, a chart is edited with the same View/Edit switch as everywhere else. The separate "edit chart" button is gone — one less thing that behaved differently on stage than it did at home.
v0.13.0

Lists that handle a real library

  • Your charts and Community are paged now, 25 at a time, with a count so you can see how big the library actually is. Loading several hundred charts in one go had started to drag.
  • Your gigs are a proper list instead of a wall of cards — with search, sortable columns, and the same paging. Search looks at the venue as well as the name, so "The Anchor" finds every gig you played there.
  • Sorting a list and jumping to a page both live in the address bar, so any view you land on is a link you can bookmark or send to someone.
v0.12.0

Six-eight, engraved meters, and a groove library that sticks

  • 6/8 is a one-tap meter in the groove editor now — and it engraves as real 6/8, beamed in threes, instead of looking exactly like its 3/4 twin.
  • Any groove that isn't in 4/4 now prints its time signature on the staff, so a 6/8 or 7/8 chart reads as one on paper.
  • Adding a groove starts it in your song's time signature instead of always handing you a 4/4 grid.
  • Saved grooves are yours for good. Save one from the groove editor and it's on every chart from then on — with a new "My grooves" page to search, preview, rename, edit and delete them, and a picker that shows the actual notation instead of a list of names.
  • The old built-in preset grooves are gone. They were 4/4-only, so they were simply wrong in any other meter, and a fixed list of four never matched what you actually play — your own saved grooves take their place.
  • Bar counts are free text now — write them the way you actually chart. "8+8" for a section you play twice, "8+1" for eight bars plus a tag, "2x4", or just "OUT". The old field insisted on a whole number and quietly rewrote anything else, so "8+8" became "8".
  • Compound and odd meters now count the way you'd count them. In 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 the tempo is the dotted-quarter pulse, so the metronome clicks two, three or four times a bar instead of six, nine or twelve — and playback follows the same pulse. Heads up: charts you already made in 6/8 will play faster than before, because their tempo was being read as quarter notes (a 70 that meant 70 dotted quarters was playing at about 47). Charts in 4/4, 3/4 and 2/4 are unchanged.
  • Whole-song playback has been retired. A chart is a map of a song, not a recording of it, and playing it back asked your notation to carry timings it was never meant to. The play button on each groove, the metronome, and your reference track all stay.
v0.11.0

Comment counts and your own charts in Community

  • The Community table now shows how many comments each chart has — so you can spot the charts people are talking about (including yours).
  • Every Community column is sortable now: click a header to sort, click it again to reverse the order.
  • New "My charts" filter in Community shows just your public charts, the way everyone else sees them.
v0.10.0

Chart links that follow your titles

  • Renaming a chart now renames its web address too — no more "untitled-chart" links for songs you titled later.
  • Every chart also has a permanent link that never changes, even through renames — find it under "Show permalink" in the Share panel.
  • Press Enter after typing the chart title to jump straight to the artist line.
v0.9.0

Your kit, sample charts, and a smarter groove editor

  • New Settings page: choose the instruments your groove editor shows by default — switch to the expanded kit any time.
  • Sample charts are always available now: read and play them from the chart list, and copy one as a template.
  • The groove editor engraves your pattern live as you tap — see the notation update with every hit.
  • Edit two bars side by side with the new "2 bars" view.
v0.8.0

Cleaner reading, and a user guide

  • Notation auto-fits its column in view mode — charts never spill off the page.
  • Reading view decluttered: no more dividers between lyrics and notation, and the per-groove ▶ buttons can be hidden.
  • A full user guide, from signup to the stage, at /docs.
v0.7.0

Plans, pricing, and the Pro trial

  • Every verified account starts a 30-day Pro trial — Gig Blazer setlists and server PDF included.
  • The free plan grew to 25 charts, yours to keep forever.
  • ChartBlazer Pro: $59/yr or $9/mo.
v0.6.0

Editor & layout upgrades

  • Two-column newspaper view fits a whole song on one page or screen — and prints exactly as laid out.
  • Resize columns by dragging their edges; a compact mode tightens the rows.
  • Pick time signatures from a dropdown, insert sections with ⌘/Ctrl+Enter, and scale the whole chart with A− / A+.