# Play a track > The transport: play, pause, stop, the metronome, the clock, the timeline you can drag, the level meter, the volume, and what the first play loads. The transport sits in the middle of the top bar. It controls whatever track is loaded, in the code view and the stems view alike. ![The transport with a loop loaded.](https://docs.songco.de/img/transport.webp) From left to right: play, stop, the title, the metronome with the tempo, the bar and beat, the clock and the track's length, and the volume. While the track plays, a level meter and the **update** button join them. ![The transport while playing.](https://docs.songco.de/img/transport-playing.webp) ## Play, pause and stop - **Play** starts the track from where the playhead is. Shortcut: `space`. - While it plays, the same button is **pause**. Pausing holds the playhead in place, and play picks up from there. The status line says `paused`. - **Stop**, the square button, ends playback and puts the playhead back at the start. Pressed while paused, it just goes back to the start. `space` works anywhere except inside a text field or the code editor, where it types a space. Click an empty part of the window first, or use the button. ## The first play Sound needs the [Songcode Audio Engine](https://docs.songco.de/audio-engine/) and the sounds the track uses. They load the first time you press play, or in the background while a track is being written. The stage shows `loading the Songcode Audio Engine…` and then `loading sounds…`; this takes a few seconds on a normal connection, and later plays start at once. Browsers only allow sound after a click or a key press, which is why a shared track does not start by itself when its link opens. If loading fails, the stage says `the Songcode Audio Engine failed to load. click to retry`. Click it. The code stays readable and copyable either way. See [troubleshooting](https://docs.songco.de/help/#playing). ## The clock and the timeline The clock shows where the playhead is in the track, followed by the track's whole length: `0:02 / 0:14`. A loop's length is one pass; when it reaches the end, the clock starts again. The thin line along the bottom of the transport is the same thing drawn: the filled part is what has played. ![Paused two seconds in, with the pointer over the timeline. The tip shows the time and the bar under the pointer.](https://docs.songco.de/img/transport-scrub.webp) - **Click** anywhere on the line to jump there. - **Drag** to scrub. While the track plays, the sound follows the drag. - The playhead snaps to bars, or to beats when the track is short enough for beats to be wide apart. Hold `alt` to place it freely. - With the line focused (`tab` reaches it), `←` and `→` step one bar, `shift` with an arrow steps one beat, `home` goes to the start and `end` to the last bar. Moving the playhead while stopped sets where the next play starts. The length and the line appear once the track has been run: after it is generated and checked, after the first play, or when a track opens from the library or a link. Before that there is only a clock. In the stems view the same playhead runs across the tracks, with a ruler that shows bars and section names. See [the timeline](https://docs.songco.de/app/stems/#the-timeline). The number before the clock is the bar and the beat the playhead is in: `4.1` is the first beat of bar four. It follows the track's meter, so a 3/4 track counts to three. ## Tempo and the metronome The tempo readout comes from the code: the `tempo` line near the top. To change the tempo, change that number in the [code](https://docs.songco.de/app/code/), or type a new value into **bpm** in the [stems view](https://docs.songco.de/app/stems/#the-song-bar). The tempo is also the metronome's switch. Click it and the mark beside it lights up; while the track plays, its arm swings from beat to beat and a click sounds on every beat, higher on the first beat of each bar. Click again to turn it off. ![The metronome on, and the volume open.](https://docs.songco.de/img/transport-metronome.webp) - It follows the playhead, so it stays on the beat through a pause, a jump along the timeline and a loop coming round. - It is for your ears only. The click is not part of the track and is never in an export, a recording or a shared link. - The click follows the volume control and goes quiet with mute. - Songcode remembers whether it was on. ## Volume The speaker at the right of the transport is how loud Songcode plays on this computer. Click it to mute and again to bring the sound back. Hover it, or reach it with `tab`, and a slider drops down: drag it, or use `←` and `→`. It changes nothing in the track. The code, the stem levels and every export stay exactly as they were, and the level is remembered for your next visit. ## The level meter The bars to the right of the clock show the output level while the track plays. It is a quick check that sound is being made. If the meter moves and you hear nothing, the problem is outside Songcode: the tab is muted, or the system volume or output device is wrong. If the meter shows a flat row of dots while the track plays, Songcode's own [volume](https://docs.songco.de/app/playback/#volume) is muted or all the way down. ## The title Click the title to rename the track. The name is kept in the draft, used when you [publish](https://docs.songco.de/app/save-and-share/) and in the file name when you [download](https://docs.songco.de/app/export/). Titles can be up to 120 characters. `↵` or `esc` finishes the edit. ![The title being edited.](https://docs.songco.de/img/title-edit.webp) ## Update **update** applies edits to the code without stopping the music. It is covered with the [code view](https://docs.songco.de/app/code/#hear-an-edit). ## What you hear The track is made in your browser as it plays. Drums come from synthesised kits and one recorded kit, and everything else from synths and sampled instruments, all driven by the code on the stage. Nothing is streamed from a server, so a track keeps playing if the connection drops after it has loaded. Parts written with chance in them (a hat that drops some hits, a fill that happens sometimes) follow the track's [seed](https://docs.songco.de/app/advanced/#engine), so they come out the same on every play. --- This page on the web: https://docs.songco.de/app/playback/ Every page of the Songcode docs, for agents: https://docs.songco.de/llms.txt (index) and https://docs.songco.de/llms-full.txt (all of it in one file).