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Quick User Guide

Here are some tips and features of Songbook which you may not know about.

Song Selection

You can choose a song from the Artists view, Top songs, Latest songs list or Search panel.

Search panel without any phrase shows the list of all songs in alphabetical order.

Tip

You can search a song by title, artist or even by a fragment of the lyrics. Search by any word, uppercase / lowercase doesn't matter.

Song Preview

Songbook displays the lyrics of the song with highlighted chords. On a song preview it keeps the display always on.

Tip

Pinch with two fingers to change the font size.

You can customize the Chords Displaying Style in a song. In Settings, choose one of the options how to present the chords:

  • Chords inline, among the words
  • Chords above lyrics, in a separate line
  • Chords aligned to right, at the end of line
  • Lyrics only, chords hidden
  • Chords only, lyrics hidden

In Settings, you can also pick your favourite Chord Notation:

  • English: Am Bb B C C# Dm Eb,
  • German (#/b): a B H C C# d Eb,
  • German (is/es): a B H C Cis d Es,
  • Dutch: Am Bes B C Cis Dm Es,
  • Japanese: Im Hen-ro Ro Ha Ei-ha Nim Hen-ho,
  • Solfege: Lam Sib Si Do Do# Rem Mib

Default chord notation had already been set automatically depending on your system language (due to some chord notations are used in particular countries).

Find out more about Chord Notations.

Transposing

You can transpose the chords of any song to any key. Click transposing icon on top action bar to show the transposing panel.

  • Click -5, -1, +1, +5 buttons to transpose by particular number of semitones.
  • Click 0 button to restore the original key.

Did you know?

Songbook automatically recognizes the key of the song based on the chords it is composed of and displays it in the Transposing panel. Detected Major key is shown in conjunction with its minor key counterpart, eg. C / Am.

Autoscroll

Click Autoscroll icon on top action bar to show autoscroll panel. Starting autoscroll causes the lyrics to be scrolled automatically by the timer.

There is an moving eye-focus zone prompting where to look when playing. The progress of Autoscroll is indicated by the eye-focus zone (highlighted moving bar on the right).

To apply the initial delay, the autoscroll waits until the eye-focus zone enters the middle of the screen. Then, it starts scrolling the song until the end of song is reached. Also, there is a count-down timer displayed before scrolling at the beginning of the song.

You can interrupt the initial delay (initial countdown) by scrolling down manually. Then the scroll will be started immediately. On the other hand, if you scroll up manually while in countdown, the initial delay will be increased to give you more time.

If the scrolling is too fast or too slow, you can adjust the scroll speed in the Settings or in autoscroll panel. However, it gets adjusted automatically, if you scroll up or down manually, while the autoscrolling is on. Then, it causes autoscroll speed to be auto-adjusted accordingly (speed up or slow down), so it learns your style.

Tip

Double click on screen to toggle autoscrolling. Clicking once again will turn it off.

Chord Diagrams

Songbook can prompt you with the chord diagram graphics, if you don't know how to play a particular chord on your instrument.

Pick your instrument in the Settings:

  • Guitar,
  • Ukulele,
  • Mandolin,
  • Piano.

Click the diagrams button in the context of a song to get the list of all unique chords occurring in a song. Alternatively you can choose the option Chord Diagrams from the main menu to search the chord by name.

Custom Songs

You can view your custom songs by clicking My songs in the main menu. To add a new one, click the icon in the main navigation menu.

Add your lyrics as a simple text with chords in square brackets. Find out more about Chord Format Specification.

There are many useful tools in Local Chords Editor, which make the editing easier.

You can also edit your songs on any other device by starting Synchronize Session in a Web Editor.

Tip

You can load your own song from a local file on your device or any cloud drive supported by your device (like Google Drive). Import from either Text file (.txt), PDF document (.pdf) or Google Docs document.

Desktop Editor: Web Editor method

You can synchronize your songs with a Web Editor to modify them in any browser, for instance on your desktop computer. Then synchronize them back to see the changes on your local device. Click 3-dots icon on My Songs and pick Synchronize with Web Editor. This will start a temporary session for 24 hours, which you can access by opening the link on any device. If changes were made in both places (locally and remotely), there might be a conflict to be resolved.

Desktop Editor: Drive method

If you prefer to edit your songs on a desktop computer in a TXT file, you can upload it to Google Drive and then you can import it from the Songbook on your mobile device.

Contributing

Songbook allows you to publish your own songs and share them with others.

Find out more about Contributing.

Controls

You can control Songbook with:

  • Touch screen
  • Volume buttons
  • D-Pad remote control
  • Keyboard's arrow keys
  • Headset button
  • External pedal plugged with mini jack cable

Find out more about Controls.

Song Cast

Song Cast is a Songbook's protocol to display songs on many devices. Create a room so that your friends could join it. Once the presenter chooses a song, it will be broadcasted and displayed on all devices connected to a room.

You can share your own songs by link. Choose Share option and you'll get your song compressed in the URL, which you can share to anyone having the Songbook app.

Playlists

You can collect any songs in a Playlists (setlists). For instance, you can keep your songs in the playlists called "Training", "Fingerstyle", "Campfire", "Concert", "Improvisation", etc.

Miscellaneous

Tip

You can use Random song option to open a shuffled song from all songs, from favourites or from a current playlist.

Tip

Use Save Backup option in Settings from time to time to keep your application data safe and to synchronize data between many devices.

Tip

There's a lot of optional, customizable features in Songbook. Walk through the Settings to discover them.