The songbook is another valuable addition to smartChord. There are no songs because of copyrights. But smartChord allows you to easily create your own songbook. With songs from the Internet or your song files. All songs can be stored in the Songbook so they are available offline.

We recommend two videos:
Victor Osakas video gives a wonderful impression
Our video provides a rough overview of the functional diversity


The songbook is easy and mostly intuitive to use. Please notice, that the functionality is reachable by different ways:

There are two menus in the top right corner:
* The menu with the 'folder' icon provides functionality around handling songs like save, open, import, search, …
* The menu with the '…' icon provides functionality around the song itself like edit, transpose, ...

- There is an inconspicuous button at the right bottom of the screen. It shows the toolbar with functionality like audio playing, scrolling, hiding/showing information, chords, ...

- The song text itself is responsive
* Tap on a chord to get more information about it (or you can change it)
* Tap somewhere else to get the toolbar


'Folder' menu:

• Internet search: Find songs in the greatest internet song catalogues. The best internet search engine worldwide assists you: Google
  smartChord parses the pages you visit and shows the song texts. Save them if you want to have them in your personal songbook.
  
• New: Create a new song, paste the text from the clipboard or edit it within the edit screen
  
• Save: Saves the currently viewed song into the s.mart Songbook.
  
• Open | manage: Open the song you have saved before (within the appearing screen, you can also rename, delete, export those files or import new songs)
  
• Import: Import songs files from your device to save them into the s.mart Songbook. After the import, they are available in the songbook, also offline.
  
• Export: Export the song to a file (to export multiple songs at once, choose 'Open')
  

By the way, smartChord is registered on your phone as an viewer and editor for (song) files with the typical extensions like .txt, .tab, .crd, .chopro. Use a file explorer on your phone to open them with smartChord.


Toolbar:
Use the lower two lines to show or hide the audio player, the scroller, texts, chords, etc.
The upper line to control playing the audio file and/or scroll the song text
Can be permanently fixed with the pin button


Scrolling:

• The scroll speed can be defined for each song individually. Either manually or automatically calculated by the visual length of a song and its duration


• Duration for automatic scrolling is taken from the {duration} directive. The duration is automatically set to the length of an audio file. Without a duration, 3:30 is assumed


• Scrolling starts with a delay, so that the first lines are longer visible. The delay is active by default. But there is an option in the songbook settings where you can change this default behavior. And you can override this default behavior for every song individually.


• You can set scroll breaks to pause scrolling for a few seconds. Add a new line with the scroll break directive {x_sccrd_sbr:10}. It stops scrolling for the defined seconds.

Other things you should know:

• When you open a song, the encoding from the settings is used. If the encoding is wrong, there are wrong characters in the text. You can change the encoding in the menu after you have opened a song


• smartChord detects the chords in the song automatically. If you have defined a fingering, it is used, otherwise smartChord calculates the fingerings according to your chord settings. You can replace each fingering. When you save a song, the fingerings are saved too


• You can zoom in and out by pinch gesture. There is also a mode for line breaks (Android >=4.4), thus you don't have to scroll horizontally


• If smartChord detects a 'H' chord, it assumes the German musical nomenclature and adds a link at the top of the song. Tap on the link to convert the German musical nomenclature to the international: The conversion changes the chord name: 'B' chords are converted to 'Bb' chords and 'H' chords are converted to 'B' chords


• You can transpose your songs to another key. You can even change to every tuning and instrument. Please be aware, that when you share a transposed song, it is shared without transposition


• The feature 'set-list' gives you the possibility to summarize selected songs of the songbook and PDF in a set-list (for example, for a performance)


• Start and stop a song by double click anywhere on the song view


• Count in runs only when a song gets started and is ignored after a pause


• Number of count in beats depends on the songs time signature {time}


• Time of count in depends on the songs tempo (BPM)

Supported song texts
smartChord can handle every plain text file (there is an example at the end of the help). Also a widespread format for songs is 'ChordPro'. It is supported essentially. Please consult the official reference page: ChordPro
smartChord uses this format to enhance the song text by song information like tuning, scroll speed, audio file, … If you use the possibility to 'edit song information', these information are also stored within ChordPro directives.

If you share or export a song to a file, the file contains the song text and the information in form of ChordPro directives. The file gets the name of the song and the file extension '.sccrd' (UTF-8 encoded). You can view/edit this files with every text editor or ChordPro viewer/editor that supports UTF-8 character set.


Supported ChordPro directives

• {album}
  
• {arranger}
  
• {artist}
  
• {chorus}
  
• {comment_box}
  
• {comment_italic}
  
• {comment}
  
• {composer}
  
• {copyright}
  
• {duration} it is used to define the initial scroll speed; When an audio file is added to the song, the 'duration' is initialized by the duration of the audio file
  
• {end_of_bridge}
  
• {end_of_chorus}
  
• {end_of_interlude}
  
• {end_of_pre_chorus}
  
• {end_of_verse}
  
• {highlight}
  
• {key}
  
• {lyricist}
  
• {meta}
  
• {soc}
  
• {start_of_bridge}
  
• {start_of_chorus}
  
• {start_of_interlude}
  
• {start_of_pre_chorus}
  
• {start_of_verse}
  
• {subtitle} it is used to build up the name of the song together with the title, if no name is specified otherwise
  
• {tempo}
  
• {time}
  
• {title} it is used to build up the name of the song together with the subtitle, if no name is specified otherwise
  
• {year}
  

Things you should now about special handling of directives in smartChord:

• Directives with information like album or arranger can be comfortable edited by menu 'Edit song information'


• The {chorus} directive shows the content of the previous chorus defined by {start_of_chorus} and {end_of_chorus}


• If {chorus} directive has no text, the text of the {start_of_chorus:text} is shown instead

There are custom extensions of ChordPro for smartChord. All of them start with '{x_sccrd_'.
You can use and edit the following extensions:

• {x_sccrd_href:https://youtu.be/IGM0XnuwtC8;Our songbook video} - use it to add an internet link


• {x_sccrd_dance:Name of a dance}


• {x_sccrd_genre:Genre of the song}


• {x_sccrd_ppat:PP 4/4 423} - Name of a smartChord picking pattern. Picking pattern are displayed or hidden together with the chords


• {x_sccrd_sbr:10} - stops scrolling for the defined seconds

All other extensions are maintained automatically by smartChord. Do not edit them!


This is an example of supported plain text:

Scarborough Fair

	

Intro:   Am   Am7   Am   Am7

	

Am      Am       G           Am  Am

Are you going to Scarborough Fair

C       Am   (C   D)      Am    Am

Parsley sage rosemary and thyme

Am       C     C             G     G

Remember me to one who lives there

Am       G     G            Am   Am

She once was a true love of mine

	

A song in ChordPro format could look like this:

	

{x_sccrd_n:Scarborough Fair}

	

{c:Chorus}

     [E]when I'm feeling lonely and I'm s[B]ure I've had [F#]enough ..

     [E]she sends the comfort coming [B]in from above

     [C#]don't need no radio at all

     [D]we got a [A]thing and it's [E]called radar [F#]love

The Songbook has got multiple modes:
▫ 'Just chords' shows only the chords and the structure of a song. The chords are aligned in columns.
▫ 'Lyrics' shows only the lyrics and the structure of a song


How to ...
Import song files e.g. txt, tabs or ChordPro
Edit songs online
Sing with your audience and show them the lyrics