How to organize items in categories – smartChord

1 Overview

Every musician who uses smartChord for a while ends up with a lot of saved items — songs in the songbook, exercises, setlists, drum patterns, fretboard quizzes, custom chords and more. As the list grows, finding the right item at the right moment becomes the real challenge. The Organize feature turns that growing pile into a searchable, filterable library.

Organization in smartChord is built around categories: you tag each item with values like Decade, Genre, Mood or Rating, and then filter, sort or search by those tags. The same mechanism works for songs, exercises, setlists and every other kind of saved content — learn it once, use it everywhere.

Predefined categories — Decade, Genre, Mood, Occasion, Popularity, Rating

Fully customizable — add, rename or delete categories and entries

Bulk assignment — tag many items at once

Powerful filter — combine categories with AND / OR, negate them

Find the gaps — Not assigned and No category reveal what is still untagged

Sort, search, favorites — classic tools on top of your tags

Recycle bin — a safety net for deleted items

For the official feature description, see Save and Organize on smartchord.de.

smartChord categorization concept overview showing how items like songs or exercises are tagged with categories such as Decade, Genre and Mood and then filtered in the Library

The idea in one picture — tag items, then filter by the tags.

Prefer a quick video? smartChord has a short tour of categorization on YouTube: Categorize items in smartChord.

2 The Library

Every tool in smartChord that stores items — Songbook, Exercise Plans, Setlists, Fretboard Trainer quizzes and so on — has its own Library. That is the place where all organization happens: you select items here, you assign categories here, and you filter and search here.

Without any categories the table is just a long flat list. The screenshot below shows a songbook with a dozen tracks — nothing is grouped, nothing is filtered, you scroll until you find what you want. That is exactly what we are about to fix.

smartChord songbook Library showing a flat unorganized list of songs and the organize menu with edit, hide, remove, assign and change-filter options

A flat, unorganized songbook — and the Organize menu that will change that.

3 Create and Edit Categories

A category is a label type (like Genre) and its entries are the possible values for that label (Acoustic, Blues, Rock…). smartChord ships with a useful default set so you can start tagging right away.

3.1 The predefined categories

Decade: 1920s to 2020s, for the era a song comes from
Difficulty: a five-star scale for how hard the item is to play
Genre: Acoustic, Alternative Rock, Blues, Boogie, Classical and about 45 more
Mood: Happy, Sad, Angry, Relaxed, Excited, Romantic, Melancholy, Motivating, Thoughtful, Nostalgic
Occasion: Background, Birthday, Campfire, Ceremony, Chill, Christmas, Church, Dance, Exercise, Funeral, Meditation, Party, Wedding
Popularity: a five-star scale for a rough audience rating
Rating: a five-star scale for your personal rating
Status: how far you got with the item, from ◯ Not started over 🌱 Started, 🔨 Basic, 👍 Solid and ✅ Mastered to ⭐ Stage ready, plus ❌ Abandoned

Tip: Status is the one category that changes over time. Combined with the filter it turns your library into a practice plan: show everything that is 🌱 Started but not yet ✅ Mastered and you know exactly what to work on today.

3.2 Customizing categories and entries

Open Edit categories from the Organize menu. The top half of the screen manages the categories themselves, the bottom half the entries of the currently selected category. Use the + button to add, the trash icon to delete, long-press to rename — and confirm with the checkmark when you are done.

smartChord Edit categories screen with top list of categories Decade, Genre, Mood, Occasion, Popularity, Rating and bottom list of Genre entries Acoustic, Alternative Rock, Blues, Boogie

Edit categories — manage categories on top, their entries below.

Tip: You do not have to use all eight predefined categories. Most users start with just Genre and Rating and add more only when a real need shows up — a category you never fill in is just visual noise.

4 Selecting Items to Organize

Categorizing items one by one is tedious. smartChord lets you select many items at once and assign categories to all of them in a single step. Enter multi-select mode, tick the items you want — or use Select all — and then open the Organize menu.

smartChord songbook in multi-select mode with all songs by the artist Johnossi checked and ready for a bulk category assignment

All songs by one artist selected in one go.

Organize menu opened on a multi-selection showing options Edit categories, Hide categories, Remove categories, Assign categories, Change filter and Filter on

Open the Organize menu and pick Assign categories.

Tip: The filter you will build in step 7 makes the opposite trick easy, too: filter first (e.g. “all songs without Genre”), then Select all — and you only have to touch the items that still need tagging.

5 Assigning Categories

The Assign categories dialog lets you tag all selected items in one step. You can pick a value for one category, for several, or add a brand-new category on the fly with the + button. Existing tags on those items stay untouched — smartChord only adds or updates the categories you actually set here.

5.1 The flow, step by step

Open the dialog — the first category (e.g. Decade) is already there, empty.
Pick a value from its dropdown, e.g. 2000s.
Tap + to add another category (e.g. Genre) if you want.
Pick one or several values from its list — multi-value entries are supported.
Tap Assign. All selected items are now tagged.

Assign categories dialog with a single empty Decade row and a plus button to add another category

1. Start with an empty Decade row.

Assign categories dialog with Decade set to 2000s and a second empty Genre row added below

2. Decade=2000s, added an empty Genre row.

Genre entry picker with checkboxes for Select all, Acoustic, Alternative Rock (checked), Blues, Boogie, Children, Christian, Christmas, Classical, Comedy and Commercial

3. Pick one or more Genre values.

Assign categories dialog fully filled with Decade 2000s and Genre Alternative Rock ready to be assigned

4. Ready to tap Assign.

After the assignment the Library shows the new tags directly under each item title, so you can verify the result at a glance.

Note: If you reopen the Assign categories dialog on already-tagged items and deselect every entry of one category, smartChord removes that category from the selected items on assign. Leaving a category out of the dialog entirely, on the other hand, keeps its existing values untouched — only the categories you actually edit are written back.

Songbook Library after assignment showing Decade 2020s and Genre Alternative Rock beneath each song title

Each song now carries its Decade and Genre tag.

6 Showing and Hiding Categories

Once items are tagged, the Library shows the category values in a small line beneath each title. That is great for scanning — you instantly see decade, genre and rating next to the song name — but it also takes vertical space.

Use Hide categories from the Organize menu to collapse the list back to a compact, name-only view whenever you want a denser overview; Show categories brings the information back.

Songbook with Decade, Genre and Rating shown beneath every song title giving a dense but informative list

Categories shown — richer, but takes more space.

Organize menu opened over a categorized song list with the Hide categories option highlighted

Pick Hide categories to collapse the view.

Songbook with categories hidden showing only the plain song titles for a compact overview

Compact view — titles only.

7 Filtering by Categories

This is where organization really pays off. Turn on the filter and smartChord shows only the items that match the categories you pick. “All 2010s alternative rock songs I rated four stars or higher” — one tap and they are on screen.

7.1 Turning the filter on

Choose Filter on from the Organize menu. A filter bar appears above the list. Use the + button at the end of the bar to add a category to the filter. Each category in the bar can then be set through its value list, cleared with its x button, or negated with the ! button to exclude the selected values.

The same filter is also available as a dialog through Change filter in the Organize menu, which is handy when the bar gets crowded. Both offer exactly the same options.

7.2 Combining categories with AND / OR

When the filter holds two or more categories, a small AND / OR toggle shows up on the right edge of the bar. AND requires all conditions to match, OR keeps items that match any of them, the classic boolean logic you would expect.

7.3 ‘Not assigned’: items without a value for one category

Sometimes the useful question is not which value an item has, but whether it has been categorized at all. Every category in the filter therefore offers an extra entry at the top of its value list: Not assigned.

Selecting Not assigned shows only the items that have no value set for that category. That is the quickest way to track down what you have not tagged yet, for example all songs without a Genre, while songs that do carry a genre stay out of the way.

Not assigned behaves like any other value, so everything you already know keeps working. Switch on ! for that category and you get the opposite: only the items that do have a value for it. You can also combine it with other categories through AND / OR, for instance “no Rating yet, but already tagged with Genre Blues”.

Note: Select all in the value list deliberately leaves Not assigned out. Ticking every value including Not assigned would match your whole library instead of just the items that carry a value, so Select all selects the real category entries only. If you want Not assigned, tick it yourself.

Tip: Use Not assigned right after importing songs or set lists: filter for the items that still miss a category, tap Select all in the list, and assign the missing tags to all of them in one step (see step 4 and 5).

7.4 ‘No category’: items without any category at all

Not assigned answers the question for one specific category. To find the items that carry no category whatsoever, add the special entry No category instead: tap the + button of the filter bar and pick it from the list of categories.

No category is a category without values, so it shows up in the bar with just its name, the ! button and the x button. Switched on it lists every item that has never been tagged. Combined with ! it does the reverse and shows only the items that carry at least one category.

Tip: No category is the perfect starting point for a clean-up session of a library that has grown over the years: it shows exactly the items your filters could never find, because they were never tagged.

Note: Not assigned and No category exist for filtering only. They are not offered in the Assign categories dialog, because “no assignment” is not something you can assign to an item. To untag items, use Remove categories as described in step 8.

Open value list of the Genre filter with the extra entry Not assigned above the regular genre values

Every category filter starts with Not assigned.

Filter bar with the special entry No category which has no value list and shows only the negation and remove buttons

No category lists the items that were never tagged.

Active filter bar with Decade 2010s and Genre Alternative Rock combined with the OR toggle and the filtered song list below

Filter on: Decade 2010s OR Genre Alternative Rock.

Organize menu with the Filter off option highlighted to temporarily disable the active filter without losing its configuration

Filter off hides the bar without losing its setup.

Note: Filter off only disables the filter, it does not clear it. Switch it back on and your last query is right there — perfect for quickly jumping between a filtered and the full view.

8 Removing Categories

Tags are not forever. If you reorganize your library or change your tagging scheme you can drop individual category values from one or many items at a time — without deleting the items themselves.

8.1 The flow

Select the items you want to clean up.
Open the Organize menu and choose Remove categories.
Tick the categories whose values should be removed — e.g. Rating.
Tap OK. Everything else stays as it was.

Songbook with several songs selected in preparation for removing a category from all of them at once

Select the items to clean up.

Organize menu opened on a multi-selection with the Remove categories option highlighted

Open Remove categories.

Remove categories dialog with checkboxes for Decade, Rating and Genre letting the user pick which category values should be dropped

Pick which category values to drop.

Tip: Removing a category value from items is very different from deleting the category itself in Edit categories. Removing just untags the selected items; the category and all other items keep their values.

9 Beyond Categories

Categories are the heart of Organize, but the Library has a few more tools that work hand in hand with them.

9.1 Sort

Every item carries automatic timestamps, so you can sort by Name, Creation date, Last access or Favorites first. Items named in the “Artist – Song” convention can also be sorted by the part behind the dash — handy for browsing by song title while keeping the artist in the name.

9.2 Search

The Library offers a name search and a full-text search over names, chords, lyrics and metadata. Both support wildcards (? for a single character, * for many) and boolean operators (AND, OR, parentheses) — and they stack on top of an active category filter.

9.3 Favorites

Tap the star next to an item to mark it as a favorite. Sorting by Favorites first pushes them to the top, and the favorite state can be combined with filters and searches just like any other criterion.

9.4 Recycle bin

Deleted an item by mistake? It is not gone yet. The Recycle bin — reachable from the Library menu — stores deleted songs, setlists, exercise plans and custom instruments, lets you search inside them, and offers a one-tap Restore. Permanent deletion only happens after an extra confirmation.

All of these tools are documented in more detail in Save and Organize.