1 Overview

The Songbook is empty because of license issues, and also because of a simple question: which songs should the Songbook contain? Everybody would expect different songs. The solution is the internet. There are excellent resources out there, and smartChord finds your songs right where they live.

Finding the right song with the right chords or tab used to mean browsing a dozen websites, fighting cookie banners, and copying text into some other app. The smartChord Songbook fixes that with its built-in Internet song search: one query, dozens of catalogs, chords and tabs extracted straight into the Songbook, ready for offline use and with fingerings matched to your instrument.

1.1 Three ways to get a song into the Songbook

The internet search is the fastest route, but it is not the only one. Which one you want depends on where the song is right now:

• The song is somewhere on the internet: use the Internet song search (steps 2 to 7). smartChord searches, extracts the chords and hands you a finished song.
• You already have the song as text on your computer: use the Online Importer (step 10). Your computer’s browser sends the songs to your device, no cable and no account involved.
• You have song files on your device or in your cloud: use Import files (step 11) for .txt, .crd, .chopro and other plain text or ChordPro files.

2 Start a New Internet Search

From the Songbook, opening the Internet song search takes just two taps: open the Folder menu in the top bar, then pick New → Internet search.

The Songbook home screen

Folder menu: tap New

Pick Internet search

3 Enter Your Query

Type the artist name, the song title, or both. You can also tap the microphone and speak the query, which starts the search right away. Tap Search to let your preferred search engine hunt through the internet song catalogs.

Directly above the search field sit the two options you change most often, so you do not have to take the detour through the settings dialog:

• Chords / TAB: the kind of content you are looking for.
• Chord page: restrict the search to one single site, or leave it on All to search them all.

The Internet song search screen

Type artist and/or title, then tap Search

4 Browse the Results and Preview the Song

smartChord opens the search result inside its own browser. Tap the link that looks most promising: the app extracts the chords or tab from the page and shows you a clean preview.

• If the preview shows the song you want, tap OK to take it into your Songbook.
• If not, tap Next hit (the arrow at the bottom) to jump straight to the next search result. Sites like Ultimate Guitar carry many versions of the same song, so this is the quick way to a better one, and it also helps when a page held no song at all.
• Alternatively use the Back button to return to the results and pick a page yourself.
• In rare cases extraction is incomplete: use the Reload button to retry.

Search results inside smartChord

Preview: tap the check mark to keep the song

5 Save the Song for Offline Use

Once the song is in the Songbook, smartChord automatically picks the best fingerings for your instrument and tuning: guitar, bass, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, or any of the other supported instruments. The chord diagrams match what you actually play, even if the song was originally written for a different instrument.

To keep the song available offline, open the Folder menu again and tap Save. Without this step the song stays in memory only and will be lost when the Songbook closes.

The imported song with fingerings for your instrument

6 Supported Song Catalogs

smartChord explicitly supports 23 chord and tab websites, including the biggest names in the business:

Because the search uses a real search engine, you are never locked to a single source: if one site doesn’t have the version you’re after, another one probably does.

7 Tailor the Search to Your Taste

The gear icon on the Internet song search screen opens a handful of settings that let you customise how the search behaves.

7.1 Automatic search

The most comfortable setting on this screen. With Automatic search switched on, smartChord loads and analyzes the first search results in the background and presents the song text immediately. You see neither a result list, nor a cookie banner, nor an ad. If the first hit carries no usable song, Next hit takes you on.

7.2 Song content type

Switch between Chords and TAB. The first returns chord sheets with lyrics; the second returns guitar tablature. The same switch also sits right above the search field.

7.3 Search engine

Pick the search engine you trust most: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Qwant, Yandex, Baidu. The same query can behave very differently from one engine to another, so it pays to try an alternative if the first one comes up empty.

7.4 Internet chord sites

Include or exclude individual chord sites. Useful when one provider consistently returns the cleanest sheets for your style or when you want to skip a site that keeps showing ads you don’t care for. To search one single site, the Chord page selector above the search field is the shortcut.

7.5 Show internet address

Toggle the visibility of the current page URL while browsing, handy when you want to see or copy the original source.

8 Already Found the Page? Hand It Over

Sometimes you stumble over the perfect chord sheet while browsing normally, long before you think of the Songbook. You do not have to search for it a second time, there are three ways to hand that page over to smartChord.

8.1 Share the page from your browser

Use your browser’s Share button and pick smartChord. The app opens the internet song search with that page, extracts the song and shows you the preview, exactly as if you had found it through the search. This also works with plain text: share an artist and title and smartChord searches for it.

8.2 Open a chord page link with smartChord

Links of the well-known chord sites can be opened with smartChord instead of the browser. Tap such a link anywhere on your device, for example in a chat or a mail, and pick smartChord in the Open with dialog.

8.3 A link in the clipboard

Copied the address of a chord page in your browser? When you open the internet song search, smartChord notices it and offers a small bar: Load link from clipboard. One tap loads that page and extracts the song. The offer only appears for links of supported chord sites, and only once, so it never gets in your way.

9 Keep Your Favourite Pages with Bookmarks

If you always return to the same song pages, use the built-in Bookmarks tool. You can store personal song URLs, organise them in folders, and open them again with a single tap, perfect for pages that you want to revisit but haven’t imported into the Songbook yet.

Click on the bookmarks in the title bar to open the bookmark tool

10 Import Songs from Your Computer

Many musicians already own a song collection: text files on the computer, ChordPro exports from a previous songbook app, or simply a song they typed themselves. The s.mart Songbook Online Importer brings them onto your device through your computer’s browser, with no cable, no account and no cloud service in between.

All you handle is a short session code. smartChord shows it, you type it on the web page, and the two are connected. Both devices may be in completely different networks.

10.1 Step by step

1. In smartChord open the Song Library, tap Import and switch on Import online. The app shows a session code such as ABCD_1234.
2. On your computer open smartchord.de/song/import2 and enter that code.
3. Paste your song into the text area, or pick text files with Open files….
4. Press Import. The Song import screen opens on your device, where you finish the import as usual.

10.2 Several songs in one go

You are not limited to one song per round. Separate them with a line containing the directive {new_song} and smartChord splits the batch back into single songs. Open files… inserts that separator for you, and you can use it repeatedly: every round of files is appended below what is already in the text area, separated the same way.

A song that carries no {title:…} directive is named after its first line.

10.3 Umlauts, accents and other special characters

The importer recognizes the encoding of your files on its own: plain ASCII and UTF-8, files with a byte order mark (UTF-8, UTF-16), and files that cannot be UTF-8 are read as Windows-1252 (ANSI), which is what older editors on Windows write. The status line always names what was used. Should a file still arrive with broken characters, set the encoding explicitly in the list beside Open files… and open it again.

The app shows the session code.

The importer in the browser of your computer.

11 Import Song Files from Device or Cloud

If the song files are already on your device, or in a cloud such as Google Drive or Dropbox, you do not need the browser at all. Open the Song Library, tap Import and choose Import files. Pick one or many files and smartChord takes them into the Songbook.

Every plain text format works: .txt, .tab, .crd, .chopro and the other usual suspects.

12 Tips & Tricks

• Switch on Automatic search and most songs arrive without you ever seeing a result list or a cookie banner.
• On smaller phones, rotate to landscape while browsing: it makes search result pages far easier to read.
• Add the word chords or tab to the query if your preferred content type isn’t the top hit.
• Not happy with the version you got? Next hit is faster than going back to the result list.
• Can’t find a song via Google? Try DuckDuckGo or Yandex: different engines index different pages.
• Always tap Save after importing a song, otherwise it won’t be there when you come back.
• Moving your whole collection over? Use the Online Importer with {new_song} and send many songs in a single batch.
• The Songbook works offline: once imported, songs, chords, and fingerings are available without an internet connection.