El Eje for iPhone

Part 1

Getting started

Open the app and you land on a simple Home screen — four big cards, dark theme, coral accent. There's no tab bar: you tap a card to go in, and a coral Home button takes you back up.

Section 1.1

What it is & getting around

1. 1
   DJ — the core of the app. Opens a second menu: Connection & Sync, Music Player, Standalone, and Controller (§2).
2. 2
   Learning — the lunfardo thesaurus and the tango encyclopedia, fully offline (§3.1).
3. 3
   Community — Articles, Events, Daily News & Cabeceo. Coming soon (§3.2).
4. 4
   Games — guess-the-orchestra, the timeline, a jigsaw and more.

Part 2

DJ

Tap DJ on Home and you get four sub-modes: Connection & Sync (pair + download your library), Controller (drive the Mac), Standalone (DJ from the phone), and Music Player (a simple player). Pairing comes first — everything else builds on it.

Section 2.1

Pair with your Mac

One PIN, once. After that the phone finds your Mac and reconnects on its own, picking the fastest path available — Wi-Fi, your phone's hotspot, Bluetooth, or a USB cable.

1. On the Mac, open El Eje → Settings → Phone remote… and turn on Let a phone control this Mac.
2. On the phone, open DJ → Connection & Sync and tap Pair your Mac. Under “Macs running El Eje” tap yours when it appears.
3. Type the 6-digit PIN the Mac shows, then tap Pair.

1. 1
   Discovery — every Mac on the network running El Eje (with the phone remote on) appears here; tap yours. If none show, leave the screen open a moment while it searches.
2. 2
   PIN — the Mac displays a 6-digit code; type it and tap Pair. It's a one-time, encrypted handshake — you won't be asked again on this Mac.

Connection methods

In Connection & Sync → Mac you can see the live Status and Latency, and which path is active among USB Cable, Wi-Fi / Hotspot, Bluetooth, and Internet (relay). The app auto-picks the fastest; the relay is a last-resort fallback for when the phone and Mac are on different networks. Reconnect / pair another adds a second Mac; Forget this Mac removes one.

Section 2.2

Sync your library

To DJ without the Mac — or just to browse on the couch — download your music and its lyrics/cues to the phone.

1. In Connection & Sync, tap Sync library to iPhone while connected over Wi-Fi, cable or Bluetooth (never cellular). Keep the screen open.
2. It runs in two passes — “Step 1 of 2 · Downloading metadata” then “Step 2 of 2 · Downloading tracks” — and ends at Up to date with a green check.
3. Turn on Keep in sync automatically to top it up whenever you're connected. Delete synced library reclaims the space.

Section 2.3

Control your set from the floor

Tap Controller and you get one screen — the console — that mirrors El Eje on your Mac. The bar pinned at the bottom, NOW PLAYING, is the real transport: it drives the Mac's main deck.

1. 1
   Search + Settings — find any orchestra, track or tanda; the gear opens settings.
2. 2
   PREVIEW deck — the phone's own audition deck. Cue a track to your headphones on the phone while the room keeps playing from the Mac.
3. 3
   Live context — read-only: the Mac's LIVE state, the current section, and time left.
4. 4
   NOW PLAYING — the master strip; this is what controls the Mac.
5. 5
   Lock — the deck is locked by default so a stray tap can't disturb the floor. Tap it (turns green→open) to take control.
6. 6
   Play/pause + seek + Volume — play or pause the Mac, scrub the timeline, and set the master volume (0–200%).
7. 7
   Tempo — −/+ in 0.5% steps, pitch preserved, with a reset.
8. 8
   EQ — opens the 10-band Equalizer (with Reduce noise, Milonga Mode reverb, Normalize loudness).
9. 9
   Fade — fade the current track out into the next.

Section 2.4

DJ from the phone

Standalone gives you the same two-deck console as Controller, but driven entirely by the phone's own engine over your synced library (§2.2) — no Mac in the room at all.

• Play, cue to headphones, scrub, nudge tempo, and shape the 10-band EQ exactly as in the console.
• The gear opens Standalone settings: Show Lyrics (adds a Lyrics tab), Audio output, and Split output (cue cable) — a DJ split cable so your headphone cue and the room come out of different channels.

Section 2.5

The music player

Music Player is the simple, listen-only player — think Spotify for your synced tango library. Browse Music / Cortinas / Tandas or search, and tap a track to play it (a tap just plays — no DJ cueing). A bar pinned at the bottom shows the current track with a scrub bar, play/pause, a tempo nudge, and an EQ button.

Part 3

Learn & community

Beyond DJing, the app carries the tango reference in your pocket — and a community layer that's on the way.

Section 3.1

Learning

The Learning card opens a fully-offline tango reference — no Mac, no internet. Two parts: a Thesaurus and an Encyclopedia.

• Thesaurus — search a tango/lunfardo word by spelling, meaning or English; each card shows the word, a coral lunfardo tag, a difficulty meter, the translation, the meaning, and a real lyric example (“In a lyric”).
• Encyclopedia — ~300 entries across Orchestras, Singers, Poets & Composers, Instrumentalists, Dancers, Archetypes, Tango by Year, Movies, Music Theory and History & Culture, each with photos, key facts, a timeline and notable works.

It's a reference to read, not a study tool — no quizzes or progress tracking on the phone (that lives in the Mac app).

Section 3.2

Community & Games coming soon

The Community section is being built — its rows (Articles, Events, Daily News, and Cabeceo) currently show a SOON tag. The idea: read tango writing and news, see what's on near you, and — with Cabeceo — connect with dancers at a milonga.

Also on the way: Share music with people nearby (in Connection & Sync → Me) to send tracks to another El Eje user over Bluetooth/AirDrop, landing in a “Shared with me” inbox. Games — guess-the-orchestra, the timeline and a jigsaw — round out the app.