SongBook manages your song collections complete with lyrics and chords. Just tap on a chord name to see its definitions. Comes with comprehensive *extensible* chord libraries for guitar, ukulele and mandolin. Transpose songs on the fly. Define playlists (sets) for performances or practicing. Based on the popular chordpro format.

SongBook Chordpro for iOS runs on all iPhones and iPod touch devices with iOS 4.0 or later, and on all iPads with iOS 3.2 or later. You'll find the complete version history at the bottom of this document.

 

Where To Find Songs For SongBook

SongBook understands the widespread chordpro song format where chords are written in square brackets within the lyrics. Unfortunately, we cannot provide songs on this site due to copyright restrictions. However, the Internet has huge archives of songs in chordpro format: simply type the song name and file extension pro or chordpro into your favorite search engine, e.g.

"<song title>" ext:pro

or use the built-in Internet search. You can also easily create your own chordpro songs. Just write the lyrics as usual and insert the chord names in square brackets at the appropriate positions as in the following example:

 

[Em]Alas, my [G]love, you [D]do me [Bm]wrong,

A detailed explanation of the chordpro format as supported by SongBook is available here.

SongBook can also automatically convert tab files (chords are on separate lines above the lyrics). The conversion will not be perfect because sometimes it is hard to detect if a line contains only chords or also lyrics/comments. Note: Our application SongBook Windows can help you editing chordpro and tab songs on a bigger screen.

 

How To Get Songs Into SongBook

The SongBook documents directory is shared with iTunes. Just select your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch device in iTunes, then click on the Apps tab, and scroll down to see the list of applications with shared documents (see also here). Select SongBook and drag/drop songs to/from Explorer/Finder. To copy whole directories (categories) to SongBook, zip/compress them first, then copy the compressed zip archive to SongBook.

The following file extensions are understood by SongBook

*.pro, *.chordpro, *.chopro, *.txt (native chordpro files)
*.tab, *.crd (tab files, will be converted and saved as *.pro files)

SongBook can also open files with supported extensions, from e.g. mail attachments, dropbox or other file sharing apps.

Dropbox Sync

If you have Dropbox account, you can easily synchronize your song collections with SongBook. Simply enter your Dropbox account data in SongBook preferences, and copy your song files to the /SongBook directory and its subdirectories in your dropbox. Synchronization takes place automatically whenever you switch to the categories list (the initial screen on the Songs tab). You can also choose to sync manually, in this case a Refresh button will appear on the categories toolbar.

Note: Synchronization is two-way and includes deletions and changes of files will also be synchronized. For technical reasons, subdirectories of the SongBook directory (categories) can only be renamed/removed on the device. Note that accented characters and other special characters in directory/category names may cause sync problems. If you experience such issues, please rename the directory/category to only contain US ASCII characters.

Song List

Songs are structured in categories. Categories are somewhat similar to folders on your computer. You can group songs in categories to help you both organize and search through your song titles. But, just like folders on your computer, deleting a category will delete all songs in it. Songs can also be organized inplaylists.

The song list displays title/subtitle of all songs in the selected category. You can search for a song by title or subtitle.

Use Edit on the Categories list to add, rename or remove a whole category. Removing a category will also remove all songs in that category. To put a song in a category, open the song, then select Categoryfrom the action menu in the lower right. To put a whole group of songs in a category, zip them on the PC/Mac, then copy the zip archive into the SongBook Documents folder in iTunes (see above).

Use Edit on the song list to remove individual songs.

The globe button in the song list toolbar will open a simple Internet search for songs in chordpro format. Songs imported via the search will be added to the currently selected category. Use the right toolbar button to sort the song list by title, subtitle, or key. SongBook determines the key by looking at the first chord in the song, or the value of the {key: ...} directive.

Song View

The song view displays the current song with lyrics and chords. Tap on a chord to look up the chord definitions. Use the chord toolbar button to toggle display of the currently used chords at the bottom (or to the right) of the song. The list will start with the first chord of the currently visible part of the song.

Chord, lyrics and tab font and text/background color can be changed in Prefs from the main screen.

Use the chord tooblar button to switch on/off a chord list on the lower/right border. This chord list shows the easiest variante of all chords currently visible on the screen.

You can also change the font sizes for the current song with the familiar "pinch" gesture, or with the font size icon on the lower toolbar. The pinch gesture applies the zoom level only to the currently displayed song. The zoom buttons change the zoom level permanently for all songs. Use the Savebutton to save the current zoom level with the song (as a {zoom: } directive) so that this particular song will always display in the selected size.

Unlike zooming of pictures, zooming of songs in SongBook will trigger a re-layout of the song, so you will never have to scroll horizontally.

On the iPad, the extra Auto-Zoom option will zoom the song so that everything fits on one page without scrolling.

Transpose

You can also transpose the song into a different key by tapping on the second toolbar button. Tap on the buttons to change the tuning in half-tone steps. Tap on the Save button to permanently save the changed chords in the song, Reset to reset to the original key. If you just tap outside the transpose toolbar, the current transposition will be active until you switch to another song.

Swipe left/right to move to the previous/next song in the currently selected category/playlist.

The action button on the right of the lower toolbar lets you switch off chords or lyrics, mail the song as an attachment, or change the category or assign the song to a playlist. If you have an AirPrint-capable printer, you can print the current song.

Note: SongBook will automatically increase the auto power-off (idle) timeout while a song is displayed.

Auto-Scrolling

The play button will start auto-scrolling the song. You can adjust the tempo with the slider. If you have found a suitable scrolling speed, tap Save to save the current scroll tempo in the song (as a {tempo: } directive). To temporarily pause the current scrolling, tap with two fingers anywhere on the screen. Repeating this multiple times will add to the delay. A three-finger tap will start/stop auto-scrolling without the need to open the auto-scroll toolbar. Note: this will only work if you have not assigned this gesture in the global preferences to some other function.

Tap with two fingers on the lower/upper half of the song to scroll down/up one page. You can also use AirTurn or similar bluetooth page turners to scroll up/down and switch to the next/previous song in the current category or playlist.

Full Screen and VGA Mode

To make maximum use of screen real-estate, SongBook can display a song in full screen mode where the whole display is used to display the song. To switch to/from full screen mode, just tap anywhere on the song view (not on a chord).

When you connect a beamer or external display using Apple's VGA adapter to your iOS device, SongBook will show the current song (or chord view) with full resolution on this display. Note that the screen ratio of the external display may differ from your iPhone/iPad, so the song view on the device is resized to match the display, and may consequently show black stripes. When you scroll/zoom on the device, the song on the display will scroll/zoom accordingly.

Internet Search

SongBook has a simple Internet search for chordpro files built-in. You can use one of the two main search providers, or type a URL of your own. If the displayed page contains a pre-formatted song, theImport button in the lower right will become active and open the song editor. You can then save the song in the song list or cancel the edit and get back to the search view.

Note: By it's very nature, Internet search can be hit-or-miss, results may vary. You are responsible for obeying the respective copyrights of the material found on the Internet.

Song Edit

You can edit songs or add new songs. The {...} menu in the upper right lets you easily enter the most common chordpro control statements. Inserting {...} controls or [] while text is selected will "wrap" the control around the selection.The first letter after the opening square bracket [ will automatically be converted to upper case.

The edit context menu (which appears after a long tap on the text) has a [..] button which will toggle display of an extra keyboard row with the chords used in the current song. The first button lets you access the built-in chord library for lookup of arbitrary chords.

Playlists

Playlists (aka sets) are collections of songs for a special purpose, e.g. a concert, or training. Playlists behave just like iTunes and iPod playlists. Removing a song from a playlist does not delete the song from either the device (it remains in its category), nor any other playlist the song might be in. Songs can be in multiple playlists, and in fact, can occur multiple times in a single playlist. You can collapse and expand playlists for easier navigation.

Select the plus button in the upper toolbar to create a new playlist. Use the Edit button to rename/delete/empty existing playlists or add songs to a playlist. When displaying a song you can also add it to a playlist with the action button.

To change the order of songs in a playlist, select Edit, then drag the song to the new position in the playlist.

Note: Playlists contain only references (title and subtitle) to the real song. If you remove the song, it is not automatically removed from the playlists but can no longer be viewed.

Chords and Instruments

SongBook comes with comprehensive chord libraries for guitar, ukulele (C, D tuning, Bariton), mandolin, and piano.

Chords are sorted by base pitch. Each chord can have several variations. SongBook knows about identical pitches (e.g. C# = Db).

To change the currently used instrument, select Prefs - Instrument. This instrument is used for all chord lookups.

You can extend the string chord libraries with your own chords. SongBook comes with a chord edito that lets you define fingerings, base fret and muted strings. The search button on the right will look up the currently defined chord in the chord library.

User defined chords will always show up in the first position in the chord view. Note: if you need a special chord only for a certain song, you'd better define the chord in the song rather than in the chord library.

The added chords are saved in a file <instrument>.chords.txt in the documents folder. You can edit it with a text editor. If you want your extra chords appear in the built-in SongBook chord libraries, please send us this file.

 

Feedback

Do you have a song that is not rendered correctly? Is an important chord missing in the chord database? Please let us know.