Lyrics and chords on stage: a digital songbook for the band
Most bands already have a songbook. It is a ring binder with plastic sleeves, half the lyrics printed and half handwritten, the chords pencilled in above the words and a coffee ring on the one song everybody needs. Or it is a phone propped on the mic stand with a chord website open, an advert sliding over the second verse and the screen dimming just before the bridge.
Both work, more or less, until the band changes something. The singer wants the chorus a tone lower, the second verse is cut, there is a new break before the last chorus. On paper that means crossing out. On a chord website it means the page is now wrong and stays wrong, because it was never yours.
A digital songbook fixes that if it is built for reading while you play. Being a notes app with bigger text does not get it there.
What a band songbook has to hold
Your version, not the record's
The lyrics and chords that matter are the ones your band plays. The key you settled on for your singer, the structure you agreed at rehearsal, the intro you cut to four bars. A downloaded chord chart is a starting point at best, and usually the first thing you change.
That is why the songbook has to be something you write and edit, and why it belongs to the band rather than to one person's phone. If the guitarist corrects a chord on Tuesday, the bassist should see the correction on Thursday without anyone forwarding a file.
Chords that stay over the right word
Chords written above the lyrics only work if each chord sits over the syllable where it changes. In an ordinary font, letters have different widths, so a chord you lined up on the laptop lands two words further along on the phone. The fix is old and simple: a monospaced font, where every character takes the same space, so the spacing you typed is the spacing you read.
Structure you can see from a metre away
Verse, chorus, bridge, solo. When the text is on a stand and you are looking at it between lines, the section titles are what you navigate by. They need to stand out from the lyrics: a heading, bold, a gap before the next block. A wall of evenly spaced lines is unreadable at a glance, and a glance is all you get while singing.
Reading while you sing
The whole difficulty is that your hands are busy and your eyes are only partly on the screen. Three things decide whether a songbook survives a gig.
Type size. Bigger than looks sensible when you set it up at home. On a stand, between you and the screen there is a metre, the stage lights and the adrenaline. If a line does not read at a glance, it is too small.
How the text moves. There are two honest options. Either the lyrics scroll on their own at roughly the pace of the song, or you move them on yourself, a screen at a time. Scrolling on its own works when the song lasts about the same every time. Moving it on yourself works when it does not, which with live music is often. You want both, and a way to switch without stopping.
Hands off. A Bluetooth page-turner pedal does for lyrics what it does for sheet music: one press, next screen. If the songbook understands the pedal, you never take a hand off the guitar.
One thing that sounds clever and is not: highlighting the line you are supposed to be singing. A screen can only guess the timing. A singer breathes, holds a note, comes in late on purpose. The moment the highlight and the singer disagree, the singer starts watching the highlight instead of singing. Bringing the right text up to eye level, at about the right speed, is the part a screen can do well.
Songs in running order
On the night you do not want to look for a song by name. The songbook should know the setlist and take you to the next song when this one ends, with the same gesture you use to turn a screen. The order itself is a separate job, covered in what a setlist is and how to make one.
What Band Companion does with lyrics and chords
Band Companion keeps each song's lyrics next to its recordings, sheet music and notes, shared by the whole band. This is what it does today:
- You write the lyrics in the app, with a blank line between verses. The toolbar has bold, italic, section titles, lists and a divider, and a Chord block that uses a monospaced font so the chords stay above the right syllable. If you already have the lyrics as a PDF, you can attach that instead.
- Instrumental blocks: you add an instrumental with its length in seconds (a solo, an intro, a break), so the scroll knows to wait.
- Sing mode shows the lyrics full screen in large type and keeps the screen on. With play on, the text scrolls on its own: it spreads the song's length (the Duration field in the song's details, or 100 seconds if it is empty) across the lines, giving each one time according to how long it is, plus the instrumental blocks. Pause it and you move a page at a time by tapping the screen or pressing the pedal. Drag with a finger to jump to a different part, and use the skip buttons if the scroll falls behind you. A thin progress bar shows how far into the song you are.
- Text size and spacing are in the settings, with a sample line to calibrate: how big the lyrics get, how close the lines sit and how far apart the blocks stand.
- Live mode works through a setlist or a gig song by song, with a choice of Score, Lyrics or Drums. With the lyrics, the pedal turns screens and, at the end of a song, moves to the next one. There are buttons to go back to the start of the song or to the end.
- Annotations on top of the lyrics, with the pencil and highlighter, the same as on sheet music. The original text does not change.
- Sharing: lyrics go out as PDF or Markdown, and the sync screen downloads everything for a rehearsal room with no signal.
What it does not do, so nobody gets a surprise: it does not transpose chords (if the key changes, you edit the chord block), it does not show chord diagrams, and it has no library of songs to import lyrics or chords from. You write or paste your own version. The scrolling follows the song's length and not the audio, and nothing highlights the line being sung, for the reason above. On the web you can write and edit lyrics and attach PDFs, but Sing mode and Live mode belong to the phone and tablet apps.
If the band also reads from scores, that side is covered in reading PDF sheet music on a tablet or phone.
Moving the binder over in an evening
- Start with the setlist, not the whole repertoire. Twelve songs is an evening; two hundred is a project that never finishes.
- Type the lyrics of each song and put the chords in a chord block above each line. Use section titles for verse, chorus and bridge, and add the instrumentals with their length.
- Enter each song's length in its details. A rehearsal recording is the best reference, rounded to the nearest five seconds. That is what makes the scroll keep pace.
- Set the text size on the stand you will use, at the distance you will stand, not on the sofa.
- Run one rehearsal reading only from the screen. That is where you find out whether you prefer the scroll on its own or a page at a time, and whether the pedal is where your foot expects it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a digital songbook?
The lyrics and chords of a band's songs kept in an app instead of a binder. A good one is shared by the whole band, shows your own version of each song, reads at a glance from a stand and moves on without you taking your hands off the instrument.
How do you keep chords lined up above the lyrics?
Use a monospaced font, where every character is the same width. Then the spaces you type to place a chord over a syllable stay correct on any screen. In Band Companion that is the Chord block in the lyrics editor.
Can the lyrics scroll on their own while I sing?
Yes. In Sing mode the text scrolls over the length of the song, taken from the song's details, with time set aside for instrumental blocks. If the song runs differently on the night, pause it and turn the screens yourself with a tap or a pedal.
Does Band Companion transpose chords?
No. If the band changes the key of a song, you edit the chords in the chord block. You can change the key of a recording for practice, which is a different feature.
Can I use a page-turner pedal for lyrics?
Yes. A Bluetooth pedal works in Sing mode and in Live mode. In Live mode, pressing it at the end of a song's lyrics moves on to the next song in the setlist.