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The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is everything you see on the screen, that is all the windows, editors, buttons, sliders, scrollbars, etc..., which are called the GUI components (aka widgets, controls).
The GUI is the interface by which you tell MU.LAB what you want to do.
Most GUI components work as you're used to from other applications, but some MU.LAB components have more specific behaviours, which are described as follows.
| Important Note To OSX Users | |
 Whenever this user guide mentions right-click, do [Ctrl]+click (if not explicitly noted otherwise)(note that a right-click might work too, it depends on your OSX setup)
Whenever this user guide mentions [Ctrl]+click, do [Apple]+click (if not explicitly noted otherwise)
Whenever this user guide mentions [Ctrl]+key, do [Apple]+key (if not explicitly noted otherwise)
MU.LAB uses customized windows because we found shortcomings in the standard platform windows, both on OSX and on Windows.
Here you see the anatomy of a MU.LAB window:
Note that on OSX, the title is in the middle, and the window buttons are at the left, as is the OSX tradition.
You can move the window around by dragging its title bar.
You can resize a window by pulling its borders or its corners. Not all windows are resizable though. Only for resizable windows the cursor changes to a pointing hand when hovering the borders/corners.
When a window is hidden, it appears as a button in the window dock at the bottom of the main window.
You can press [Ctrl]+[Tab] to focus the next window. On OSX, this is also done by [Ctrl]+[Tab] as [Apple]+[Tab] is already used by the system.
When you press a key on your computer, then the question is: what part of the GUI will process that key? Imagine, you press [Delete], the should MU.LAB delete the selected parts or a track or a rack or...
So it's important to have a certain focussed component that will process the keys you press. This is applies to all software applications.
MU.LAB clearly indicates the focussed GUI component by drawing a colored rectangle around that component:
Whenever an alert box pops up, you can choose one of the button options by clicking on it (of course), but also by pressing the first character of that option.
So for example for this alert:
Pressing Q = Quit without Save
Pressing S = Save before Quit
Pressing C = Cancel
Whenever there is a "Cancel" option, you can also always press ESC to cancel.
Above are examples of a knob and a slider. Knobs and sliders almost work in the same way:
- Clicking on it and dragging it up-down OR left-right will tweak the knob/slider. For a vertical slider you can only drag up-down of course.
- When you hold [Ctrl] while dragging, the changes are much finer.
- When you hold [Shift] while dragging, the changes are more extreme.
- When you hold [Shift] when you click a slider, the handle immediately jumps to that position.
- When you hang over a knob/slider with the mouse (even no focus required!), you can also use the mouse wheel to tweak the knob/slider.
And again [Ctrl] and [Shift] give you a rich control, cfr above.
- When the knob/slider has the focus (=colored box around it), you can also press the +, - for tweaking.
- Tweaking with the keys, holding [Ctrl] and [Shift] works similar as above.
- Pressing the Home key sets the knob/slider to its default value. This can also be done via a [Alt]+click on the knob/slider.
As you see, a knob/slider can be tweaked in various ways, depending on your needs.
- The Desktop button brings you to the Desktop.
- The Favorite Folders button allows you to quickly go to one of your favorite folders, or manage them.
- The File Name Filter button allows you to set the name filter to e.g. "B*.MuSynth" which means that the browser will list all files starting with B and having a 'MuSynth' extension.
- When browsing for an audio file, then when you click the file name, the audio file plays one-shot AND it is active on your MIDI keyboard so you can instantly play some notes with the preview
Context menus are hidden menus that are only relevant to a specific context/object.
Context menus are opened by right-clicking on the relevant object.
On OSX that is [Ctrl]+click. Note that a right-click might work too, it depends on your OSX setup.
Within these context menus, you can press the first character(s) of an option to choose that option. Sometimes this might be quicker than selecting the option with the mouse.
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