Songbook chordpro file formatting

Riff

I would love to see a couple more ChordPro tags added to ST3, especially for Choruses and for Tabs. I don't have much tab at all in my songs, usually a quick little bit that jogs my memory of an important lick. I'd really like to have different font options for that. And for Choruses, it'd be great to have an indent for that section. Song Title and Artist would be great too. As it is, I wrote a parser to get my ChordPro songs ready for import to ST3, but that didn't solve my tab or chorus wishes!

{t:Song Name}
{st:Artist}

{sot}
insert short tab here with different font
{eot}

Hey it's a verse

{soc}
I'd love for this
Chorus to be indented
{eoc}

Lishy

Riff what does putting titles in {} do on songbook?
Intrigued as to why you would need the song title in the lyrics when it’s already at the top above the song.

peter

Songbook uses tags to store metadata about songs. Stage Traxx uses its database to do that. These 2 ways to do that are not compatible so Stage Traxx just ignores these tags.

jamsden

What I'm saying is that Stage Traxx could import Songbook files and convert the tags to Stage Traxx metadata or applicable markdown.

Note that chords in markdown comments are processed, but probably shouldn't be - they're comments after all. A work around is to put them in {} so they are ignored.

peter

Reading the tag and writing them to the metadata is problematic as that could change song title, artist and whatever else is already setup in Stage Traxx without you realizing what is happening. That's why I ignore these tags.

I can't reproduce the issue with comments and chords. Do you have an example?

Riff

I wouldn't replace the metadata with what is found in the tags, just use it for lyric display purposes. Personally, I like to have the song name at the top, so I convert {t:Back In Black} to ##Back In Black manually.

The more important tag for me is for a bar of tab {sot} / {eot}. It'd be nice to be able to set a separate font, size, and color for that within the lyrics and chords.

Damir

Riff The more important tag for me is for a bar of tab {sot} / {eot}.

What does {sot} / {eot} mean and how is it useful ? can you please explain.
Thanks Damir

Damir

Riff Personally, I like to have the song name at the top, so I convert {t:Back In Black} to ##Back In Black manually.

Why can’t you just place the song name in the first line as normal text?

Riff

Damir
Some songs I'll drop a quick little bit of tab to remind me of how something is played. In the ChordPro format you can mark up your lyrics to indicate where the tab starts {sot} and ends {eot} (or {start_of_tab} and {end_of_tab}. Because tab has to be monospaced font like Courier, it'd be awesome to separate it from the lyrics and chords fonts, colors, and sizes.

For example:

Becomes this:

Damir

Riff Thanks Riff, I see what you are trying to achieve now, can I give you some gold advice from having 64 years of life experience,
If I had my 40 year back right now and had to use ST3 I would not waste my time programming so much information in to my performances as that makes your brain lazy and your performance predictable and boring, this is what I noticed , the performers that a spontaneous are a lot more entertaining , no disrespect to you or anyone else , I wish I didn’t need Lyrics but I do because my brain got lazy due to using cheat sheets , I can feel my chords but I still need them for complicated songs , because I did not use chat sheets when I was younger, so what I am trying to say is don’t program every little detail in to ST3 as it will reduce your ability to be spontaneous and the end result is you will be boring on stage, live a little on the edge and surprise yourself and the audience and you both will benefit.
Since I need my lyrics and chords I rather just have a faster and more flexible EDITOR than add ons that a computer genius is only able to program.
Rock on 🎸

Lishy

Riff I can’t see what sot and dot does in your second example.
It looks pretty much the same to me with the exception of the chords being bold which you can do. You can also highlight your tab a different colour.
Really struggling to see why you’d need the name of the song within the lyrics when it’s at the top of screen anyway.

Riff

Lishy
{sot} means start of tab
{eot} means end of tab
Everything between those tags is considered tablature. I want a different font size for tabs than for lyrics or chords, and it has to be a monospaced font, unlike lyrics or chords.

Migrating to this app from other apps is challenging sometimes because of the differences. I'm finding work arounds and writing custom parsers to deal with it and make it easier, but I wish I didn't have to.

ST3 is a great app and worth every penny and then some, and the 100+ hours I've put into it.

Riff

Good advice! You've got me beat by a few years, but I've been doing this a long time and I know exactly what you mean. When I play out, I hardly look at lyrics and sometimes I don't even have them available depending on the show.

If you're anything like me, I've forgotten more songs than I know! Sometimes I'm doing an informal gig with songs I haven't played in a long time. Sometimes I'm sharing my screen with someone unfamiliar with how to play the song. Or maybe I need to quick rehearse 50 songs for a fill-in gig. If I've already spent time and made my notations in ChordPro, it just makes everything super simple and fast.

For me, my song sheets have evolved over the years from simple Word docs and pdfs in a binder to migrating to apps.

ChordPro format seems to make the most sense to me because of it's used by the best song apps. It's simple, transposable, and chords are perfectly placed. If I need to create a songbook for a gig for the other musicians I can create one quickly in either pdf or on the computer.

I've got 250+ songs in ST3 with multitracks, and my library is always growing. Sometimes my brain is going to need a couple seconds to scan a piece of tab or a lyric.

Lishy

Riff yeah I get what it stands for but couldn’t see what it did to the tabs as they look exactly the same albeit ones a bit smaller.

Riff

Lishy I did the screen caps from my computer. If I went to my iOS apps you'd see more of a difference between the tabs and lyrics/chords, but I thought those screenshots would get the idea across.