When you first open the page, you'll be greeted by the home screen, where you can learn more about this project before getting started. When you click the "BEGIN!" button, you'll be brought to the region selection screen, where you can begin choosing which threat theme you want to play with.
All regions are organized alphabetically. Navigate between slides using the left and right caret buttons. To switch between different groups of regions (i.e. vanilla, modded, and custom regions), click the buttons to the left of the carousel with the types of regions you wish to choose from.
Let's say you chose Outskirts. You'll then be brought to this region's "music screen".
In the top left, you'll find the exit button, which will bring you back to the selection screen. Everything under the title of the region will be what you use to create your mixes. You'll also find that, when you begin playing music, a visualizer will appear and start moving in the background. Its visibility is toggleable via a button in the row of buttons towards the bottom, which I will cover in more detail later.
The progress bar represents the duration of the threat theme. It will automatically begin once you start the song, and reset when the song loops. Use it to learn when certain layers of the threat theme will begin playing to create stronger mixes!
This row of buttons represents each individual layer of your region's threat theme. Each button has an icon to help you understand what sound each button is representing. Beneath each large button (also called a "layer button"), is a smaller button with an icon representing headphones. These are called "solo buttons".
To simply go over what clicking each button will do, clicking a layer button will either mute or unmute the sound that it is representing (after the start button has been clicked!). Hitting a solo button will solo out whichever layer you want to have playing by itself. Clicking the solo button again will un-solo the layer that you've chosen and unmute any other layers that were playing beforehand. For instance, if I have the kick (scug drum), bass (guitar), and arps (piano) playing, when I hit the solo button under the arps button, both the kick and bass layers are muted so that only the arps are audible. Clicking that same solo button again will unmute the kick and the bass.
Below the layer buttons, you'll find another row of buttons which provide you with greater control over your mix. From the left to right, the first three buttons control how the song plays, the next three allow you to record your mixes, and the final button is a simple toggle for the visualizer that runs in the background.
Here's how each button is used:
Before the song begins, you have the option to choose which layers you want to start off with. In order for this button to work, you must have at least 1 layer pre-selected. This is done by clicking on the layer buttons that you want to pre-select, causing them to enlarge to signify that they're active. Once you've chosen all of your layers, you can then click the start button to begin the threat theme. The layers that you've pre-picked will now be audible. Again, you must click the start button to begin the song before anything can play!
Alternatively to the start button, you can also click the play all button to begin the song with every layer active at once. If the threat theme is active and is currently playing, this button will change icons and become a stop or "end all" button. When clicked at any point, the song will cease and completely reset. The button will then change back to its "play all" state, and you can then either press it again or pre-select layers and use the start button.
Clicking the pause button will halt the song without ending it. The progress bar and visualizer will cease movement as well. This also extends to the recording feature that you may have active, temporarily stopping it without effecting the resulting mp3 file. Although the song is paused, you can still mute, unmute, and solo layer buttons as you please (use this to your advantage to really get creative with your mixes!). After pausing the song, the pause button will become a resume button and, as you could guess, will resume the song once clicked.
Pressing this button will activate this webpage's recorder, which allows you to record your mixes and then export them as an mp3 file. The recorder only picks up audio made by the page and no other audio sources; so not your microphone or external tabs/programs making noise. When the recorder is active, this button's icon will gain an ellipsis next to the microphone to show that recording is in progress. If you press this button before the song starts, the button icon will gain a large circle next to the microphone and the recorder will then be queued, meaning it will activate as soon as the song starts.
Pressing this button will transfer whatever the recorder picked up into an exportable mp3 file. You'll be prompted to enter the name of your file before it's automatically downloaded onto your computer. This file can then be used and shared (hopefully) wherever you please.
When pressed, the recording that's currently active will be discarded. A new recording can then begin afterwards, given there's no other recordings currently running. This button will also cancel a queued recording if the song hasn't started yet.
Lastly, the visualizer toggle can turn the visualizer moving in the background on or off. When on, the button icon will be how it is normally, representing audio waves enclosed in a canvas. When off, the button icon will be crossed out to signify the visualizer not being active.
That wraps up about everything that you need to know to use this webpage to its fullest. You have the tools to mix and match the layers of your favorite threat themes as you please, so I hope you enjoy using Threatmixer!