Using a more versatile lyrics editor?

musicadi

Hi Peter,

I'm aware you have enough to do now, just posting this as a possible future addition. If not for ST4, maybe for ST5 🙂

What if the current lyrics editor would be replaced by a spreadsheet-like editor?

You would then have the advantage to have timecodes, chords, lyrics or any other data in separate columns, and it would be easier to manipulate each of these separately.

Syncing lyrics to audio takes a while, since you have to go through the whole song, but I already got used to it. However, if you change an audio file for an existing song (because you need to add a count-in, chorus etc.), you will have to start syncing your lyrics from scratch, which is quite a lot of extra time for only a small change..

Having the time codes in a separate column could theoretically make it possible to shift them by a given amount. Say, you insert a count-in: you would just select the first row of lyrics and shift it along with all subsequent rows by a given time. This would save you from having to sync the lyrics all over again.

Or let's say you add a chorus and update the audio file. You could then select several lyrics rows in the editor and just copy/paste them wherever you want.

It could also be easier to insert and transpose chords or other data, since they would have a dedicated column.

Another possible feature for this advanced editor:
I use software instruments for my songs (like probably many other ST users), so for example I can play the melody, export it as midi and then the editor could possibly import the midi file and convert the "note on/off" messages of a given midi channel to timecodes. Then, you could just copy/paste the lyrics, which would be inserted in their own column (1 row for each line).

You could theoretically also have the possibility to import chords/lyrics events from a midi file, if existent.

I think this could be a cool and successful addition and could possibly attract more users.

Cheers,
Adrian

AnthonyB

musicadi However, if you change an audio file for an existing song (because you need to add a count-in, chorus etc.), you will have to start syncing your lyrics from scratch, which is quite a lot of extra time for only a small change..

Yep, my band have learnt not to frivously ask for an extra bar of count-in, or drop/add a Chorus, etc for exactly that reason 🙂 I did make a small python app to auto add/remove a value (in ms) to all timestamps in a lyric sheet to make this process a little less painful, but it is still not a small task.

I had had a similar thought given I work in spreadsheets constantly. Then again, timestamps can be used anywhere for lyric highlighting and are not always at the start of a line on the left edge (i.e. a 'Column'). It's almost like the editor needs to treat timestamps, visible lyrics, MIDI Events, etc. as different entity types that it recognises, that would then allow you to manipulate them collectively. Kind of like how a Code Editor/IDE knows the language being used and can find errors, provide syntax prompts as you type, reference previously used code, etc. 🙂

This would potentially also solve another classic problem - changing the MIDI Channel on a bunch of commands (e.g. the guitarist was using MIDI Channel 2, they leave, new guitarist needs everything on MIDI Channel 4 [don't ask me why...]).

musicadi

AnthonyB Maybe it would be interesting/easier to use the .lrc format for lyrics. They wouldn't be embedded in the ST database, but rather exist as separate files in the same folder, named Song_Filename.lrc

It's pretty widely implemented, and the advantage would be that you can easily edit .lrc files in many other apps (there are even online .lrc editors). There are also apps that can easily convert lyrics from a midi file to .lrc, so that would solve our "problem" with not being so keen in adding stuff because it would take a lot to resync the lyrics 🙂

I guess for now @Peter will be happy to get ST4 released and then he'll probably take a well deserved vacation, but let's see if this could be something for the future

musicadi

musicadi on a side note... you COULD use one of these .lrc editors to edit your lyrics and then export them as .txt, which you can then import with ST. The only possible issue could be that .lrc also has "end timestamps" in addition to "start timestamps" for any given text (which actually makes the .lrc format way more versatile)

MarkGuitar

I have upvoted this as it may be something @peter will consider in a future version.
Oddly, in the long run it could end up simplifying things for Peter if we were to use an ‘industry standard’ format for lyrics as the core editing process. It would allow the use of existing apps to create lyrics rather than having to create them using a custom built code routine.
Not really any different to using PDFs. ST doesn’t have code to create a PDF from scratch. And rightly so.
Just a thought.