Scores & composing playermusic standprinting

Your score comes alive: the player, the repeats, the music stand

The score no longer just gets printed: it plays, lights up chord after chord, counts your repeats and goes full screen.

Your score comes alive: the player, the repeats, the music stand

Until now, Handpan Constellation Studio’s visual score was there to keep and to pass on: you exported it as a PDF, printed it, sent it. It can now do one more thing, and it’s the one that changes daily practice: it plays itself. The current diagram lights up, the page scrolls on its own, and all you have to do is follow.

Everything below holds whether your handpan is acoustic or electronic: a score, a player, a music stand and a printout don’t depend on the instrument you play them on.

Reading a score already means doing two jobs

When you work through a chord chart, your brain does two jobs at once: playing, and knowing where you are. The second one eats almost all the energy. You lose your line, you repeat the wrong verse, you stop to check — and the musical momentum drops.

A player that points at the exact spot solves that quietly.

▶ The player: a score you can listen to

A ▶ / ⏸ / ⏹ bar plays the chords in the order of the lyrics. The current diagram lights up, the page scrolls by itself: impossible to get lost. You choose block chords or arpeggios, you set the BPM live, and the arpeggios really do unfold at the tempo — in eighths or quarters, depending on what you’re working on.

Handpan Constellation Studio, Visual Score Editor in Song mode, dark theme. The PLAYBACK bar at the top shows a ⏸ button (the piece is playing), a stop button, a 🥁 drummer toggle, a metronome toggle, TEMPO 80, MÉTRIQUE 4/4, and the attack set to Arpège among App, Plaqué, Arpège and Arpège ↑↓. Below it, the line « Batteur — Pop 4/4 · 80 · au repos ». On the left, the MODE panel with Chanson selected and key C. On the right, the sheet « LET IT BE — The Beatles » with a 4/4 badge under the title, a COUPLET 1 section and a boxed REFRAIN block, chord diagrams C, G, Am and F placed above the lyrics, and ×4 and ×2 badges on the C and G chords of the third line.
The editor during playback: the button shows ⏸, the attack is set to Arpège, tempo 80, time signature 4/4. The diagrams sit above the lyrics of Let It Be, with their ×4 and ×2 badges. (The interface is shown in French.)

Click the image to open it, then click again for full size.

Close-up of the score sheet during playback: the Am chord diagram is enlarged and surrounded by a cyan halo, while the neighbouring diagrams stay at normal size with no halo.
The same screen, closer in: the diagram currently playing — here Am — grows and lights up with a cyan halo. The others stay dark.

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It’s also a way to learn a piece by ear: you listen to it turn at 40 BPM, very slowly, until the progression becomes obvious.

×N: saying how many times

Every chord carries a small ×N badge. One click and you say how many times to play it, from 1 to 8. The player takes it into account, and the ×N values appear on the PDF — because a chart without repeats is only half a score.

Detail of a lyric line from Let It Be: above the words « Speaking words of wisdom, let it be », three chord diagrams — C, G, then F and C side by side. The C diagram carries a cyan « ×4 » badge, the G one a « ×2 » badge.
The ×N badge sits on the diagram itself: ×4 on the C, ×2 on the G. Each click moves the count up one step.

Click the image to open it, then click again for full size.

In the same spirit, a song now carries its time signature — 4/4, 3/4, 6/8 or 2/4 — displayed near the title, on the preview as well as in the exports.

🎼 The music stand (Pupitre): full screen, screen awake

Here’s the little detail that helps every single day. One 🎼 button and your score goes full screen, ready to play from an iPad or a phone propped in front of you: scroll with a finger, zoom by double-tap or pinch, and above all the screen stays awake while you play. No more screen going dark mid-chorus, no file to generate, no waiting.

Header of the score sheet: the title LET IT BE in large capitals, the author The Beatles in italics below, and under both an oval badge reading 4/4.
The time signature appears just under the title and author, in a pill — here 4/4. It follows the piece all the way into the exports.

Click the image to open it, then click again for full size.

Handpan Constellation Studio's music stand in full screen, at the proportions of an iPad held in portrait. The LET IT BE score fills the screen: title, author, 4/4 badge, a COUPLET 1 section on the left and a boxed REFRAIN block on the right, chord diagrams above the lyrics, ×4, ×2 and ×3 badges. No toolbar is visible, and the footer reads « créé avec Handpan Constellation Studio by David Lesage ».
The 🎼 music stand in full screen, at iPad-portrait proportions: no toolbar left, only the score. The interface hides itself after a few seconds.

Click the image to open it, then click again for full size.

The music stand opens from the editor, from your pieces, and on the way out of Quick Jam.

🖨 And for those who love paper

A piece you composed now prints the way it’s played: one line per part, with its colour band (Verse, Chorus, Bridge…), the diagrams in order, and all your settings respected — Eco-Ink mode, landscape, legend. An optional memo page lists the chords section by section, with their repeats.

First page of a PDF actually exported by the application, in Eco-Ink mode (white background). Title PETITE RONDE DU SOIR, subtitle « par David Lesage — Gamme : Do majeur (démo) (C) ». In the middle, the handpan diagram with its notes named C2 to G4. Below it, the line « Accordage : C Majeur — C2 · D2 · E2 · F2 · G2 · A2 · B2 · C3 · D3 · E3 · F3 · G3 · A3 · B3 · C4 · D4 · E4 · F4 · G4 ». Then two sections: a blue « Couplet » band followed by the C, G, Am, F diagrams, and a pink « Refrain » band followed by the F, C, G, C diagrams. Footer: « créé avec Handpan Constellation Studio by David Lesage ».
A piece composed in the app, exported to PDF and printed in Eco-Ink: one line per part, each section announced by its colour band — Couplet in blue, Refrain in pink — and the diagrams in playing order.

Click the image to open it, then click again for full size.

You can also choose the diagram size — S, M, L or XL — for a score that reads from a distance, and reorder lyric lines by drag and drop.

A score written by several hands

One last point, and it matters: shared scores keep track of who contributed what, first and last name shown. Placing a chord in the right spot, fixing a repeat, specifying a time signature: small gestures, but end to end they build a handpan repertoire that existed nowhere else. It’s the same spirit as the feedback feature — a tool we make together.

Exports made without Studio access carry a discreet “free version” watermark; everything else — player, music stand, repeats — stays under your fingers.

The same PDF export, this time without Studio access: the watermark « Handpan Constellation Studio · version gratuite » is repeated diagonally across the whole page, over the title, the handpan diagram and the chord diagrams. At the bottom, a QR badge accompanies the mention « Version gratuite · www.handpan-studio.app », overlapping the footer.
The same export, made without Studio access: the « version gratuite » watermark is repeated across the page, and a QR badge is added in the footer.

Click the image to open it, then click again for full size.

Open Handpan Constellation Studio, load a song and press ▶. Watch it light up chord after chord: that’s the moment a score stops being a document. And if you’d like us to work through a piece together, my handpan lessons are made for that.

Ready to make your colours sing?

Try the app for free, or discover the electronic Neotone handpan.

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