Overview
The songbook is the most valuable addition to smartChord. This is the compressed feature list:
⭐ Find and save all the songs you like – without registration and account
⭐ Millions of songs from the best internet song catalogs like ultimate-guitar, chordie, e-chords, guitaretab, … for every instrument and tuning
⭐ Transpose between instruments, tunings, keys, with or without capo!
⭐ Intelligent word wrap, zoom, multi-column and auto scroll feature
⭐ Integrated YouTube-, video- and audio-player with A-B loop, drum machine as well as a metronome
⭐ Full-screen mode, ‘dark’ mode, history, print, …
⭐ Import, export, synchronization, share with friends
⭐ Online editor, viewer and importer
The songbook does not contain songs because of copyrights. But smartChord allows you to easily create your own songbook. With songs from the internet or your song files. All songs can be stored in the Songbook so they are available offline.
We recommend three videos about the s.mart Songbook:
Our overview video shows you in a nutshell what you can expect:
Victor Osakas video gives a wonderful impression
Our video provides a rough overview of the functional diversity
User interface

The songbook is split into different sections and everything but the song can be hidden.
Title

- The ‘Navigation’ menu brings you back or to the home screen
- The History gives you quick access to your latest songs
- The ‘Menu’ provides functionality around the song itself like edit, transpose, …
- The ‘Folder’ menu provides functionality for handling songs:
- Find songs in the greatest internet song catalogs.
- Save the found songs in the songbook and use it also offline
- ‘Open | manage’ opens the ‘table of contents’ screen with powerful functionality to manage your songs: Search, categorize, import, export, share, …
Toolbar
Hide – show – switch

The lowest row of the toolbar lets you switch the mode of the songbook.
- ‘Default‘ is the mode where chords and lyrics are in separate lines
- ‘ChordPro‘ presents the songs in ChordPro style, where the chords are in the same line of the lyrics. This style is more compact but maybe a bit confusing.
- ‘Just chords‘ shows only the chords and the structure of a song. The chords are aligned in columns.
- ‘Lyrics‘ shows only the lyrics and the structure of a song. This is the mode we would recommend if you use the songbook as a singer.
Start – Stop

You can enable/disable the player and the scroller to be part of the start and stop.
Count in
- Count in runs only when a song gets started and is ignored after a pause
- Number of count in beats depends on the songs time signature {time}
- Time of count in depends on the song’s tempo (BPM)
Show – hide song content

To get a song clear, you can hide the parts which are not of interest for you:
- Comments
start a line with a ‘#’ and it is regarded as a comment - Lyrics
- Chords
- Tabulature (TAB)
The intelligent line break option breaks belonging lines as a block (TABs or chord and lyrics) so that no horizontal scrolling is necessary (Android 4.4 or newer)
The multi-column layout can present a song in 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns. It is song specific and can differ from song to song (Android 7 or newer).
Scrolling

- The scroll speed can be defined for each song individually. Either manually or automatically calculated by the visible scroll range, the length of a song and its duration
- Scroll delay time in seconds is shown as a count down
- Duration for automatic scrolling is taken from the {duration} directive. The duration is automatically set to the length of an audio file or YouTube video if it is associated with a song. Without an explicit set duration, 3:30 is assumed
- Scrolling starts with a delay so that the first lines are longer visible. The delay is active by default. But you can change this default behavior for every song individually
- You can set scroll breaks to pause scrolling for a few seconds. Add a new line with the scroll break directive {x_sccrd_sbr:10}. It stops scrolling for the defined seconds
- Scrolling is supported if the intelligent line break is active
- Scrolling can be deactivated on start (please see Start – Stop)
Information

There is a compact representation of the song information and a representation of the complete set of information. Switch between them with the ‘arrow’ button.
You can tap on the information to change it.



If the information view is hidden, the song name is automatically shown in the first line of the song.
Chord gallery

A tap on the chord gallery plays the chord if “Sound” is enabled in general “Sound settings”.
A long press shows a menu for the chord. With it, you can get more information about the chord. Or you can change the chord or its voicing for the whole song.
There is also an option for the sort order. Either the chords are sorted by name or by the order of their occurrence.
Song text view

The song text itself is responsive. Tap on a chord to get a dialog with more information about it. Within this dialog, you can change the chord or its voicing for the whole song. There is an option to change this behavior. Then it plays the chord.

Tap somewhere else to get the toolbar. You can get the toolbar also with the inconspicuous button (‘….’) at the right bottom of the song text.
Double-tap starts or stops the player and/or scroller.
You can zoom in and out by pinch gesture.
There are a lot of options to customize the song view. Please see the songbook settings:
- Use the color options to beautify your songbook with three different color schemes:
- Bright
- Dark
- Printout
- Define the colors for the text and background of:
- chorus
- bridge
- interlude
- pre-chorus
- verse
- Define a different font








Player
There fife possible players:
◾ Audio player
◾ Drum machine player
◾ Metronome
◾ Video player
◾ YouTube player
You can switch between them by the button in the toolbar. We recommend the option to select the player automatically. Then it shows the player based on the linked player source. Either an audio file, a YouTube video id or a drum pattern.

The players are playing even if they are hidden.
Audio Player

- A-B loop to repeat only a part of a song
- Accelerate or slow down the speed at which you’d like to practice a song (Android >= 6.0). It affects the audio play speed as well as the scroll speed
- Option to play the song in a loop
- There is an automatic lookup for audio files if the location has been changed (e.g. after synchronization).
Video Player

You can add a video that is stored on your device to every song. The embedded video player plays the video beneath your song text, so you can keep an eye on both. The video player supports the formats “3gp”, “mkv”, “mp4”, “ts” and “webm”.
- A-B loop to repeat only a part of a song
- Accelerate or slow down the speed at which you’d like to practice a song. It affects the audio play speed as well as the scroll speed
- Option to play the song in a loop
When you add a video to a song where the duration isn’t set, the duration of the song is automatically set to the duration of the video.
Below the video player is a handlebar to customize the size of the video player. There is an option in the songbook settings to hide the handlebar to save space on a small smartphone screen.
YouTube Player

- In every song, you can create a link to a YouTube video
- The embedded YouTube player plays the video in parallel to your songtext
- If you add a video to a song where the duration isn’t set, the duration of the song is automatically updated to the duration of a video
- Below the video player is a handlebar to customize the size of the video player. There is an option in the songbook settings to hide the handlebar to save space on a small smartphone screen
- The directive {x_sccrd_yt:} is used to define the YouTube video by its ID (e.g. {x_sccrd_yt:19JVc76ExkY}).
Drum machine

Integrated drum machine player to play the drum patterns for the musical accompaniment. When playing, it shows the minimized drum pattern view. Tap on it to stop the player.
You can choose between hundreds of shared drum patterns or create your own. The speed for the drum pattern is given by the song.
Metronome

The speed for the metronome is given by the song or can be entered by BPM dialog with tap tempo functionality. You can also select song specific time signature from a list of predefined measures.
The player options allow:
◾ Optionally flash
◾ Optionally mute
◾ Optionally vibrate
Get new songs
The songbook is empty because of license issues and the question: which songs should the songbook contain? Everybody would expect different songs. The solution is the internet. There are excellent resources. smartChord finds your songs out there. Just use ‘Folder’ menu -> ‘New’ -> ‘internet search’. The internet search will find millions of songs from the greatest internet song catalogs like ultimate-guitar, azchords, chordie, e-chords, guitaretab,…. Browse them and save them in smartChord to use them offline.
You can even use songs from a guitar site to use it for your Ukulele or any other supported instrument or vice versa. smartChord shows the correct chords and fingering for the instrument.
This mighty song search uses a search engine to find your favorite songs in the greatest internet song catalogs. It’s done in just three steps:
- Enter the name of the artist as well as the title of the song and start the search. You’ll get the search result from the search engine in a browser.
- Use the browser to navigate to your song page. If the browser shows a page with a song, the song is extracted and presented to you. It can take some seconds on a slow web page or if you have a slow internet connection.
- If you like the extracted song, use ‘OK’ to take it to the songbook. Otherwise, go back and try another page.



Please notice:
- smartChord uses a search engine like Google to search for songs. This is the very best possibility to find any song you like, as you are not limited to just one song provider.
- Like in the web interface of the search engine, you can add everything to the search term that can help to find your song.
- In rare cases, it can happen, that the extraction of a song is incomplete. Normally the ‘reload’ button fixes the problem.
- Check the settings for the search. You can select another search engine or limit the search to a special internet song catalog or exclude it from the search.
Internet chord sites
The following internet chord sites are explicitly supported, but there are thousands of other sites which will work too.
▫ www.amdm.ru
▫ www.azchords.com
▫ www.bigbasstabs.com
▫ www.chordie.com
▫ www.chords-and-tabs.net
▫ www.cifraclub.com
▫ www.cifras.com.br
▫ www.e-chords.com
▫ www.guitaretab.com
▫ www.guitartabs.cc
▫ www.guitartabsexplorer.com
▫ www.mandotabs.com
▫ www.tabs4acoustic.com
▫ www.ukutabs.com
▫ www.ultimate-guitar.com
▫ www.yourchords.com
Search engines
Songbook supports a lot of search engines. They are essential to finding your songs. Each of them has different algorithms to rank the chord pages. In the case that your preferred internet site for chords is not listed by the default search engine, just switch to a different one like:
▫ baidu.com
▫ bing.com
▫ duckduckgo.com
▫ ecosia.org
▫ google.com
▫ qwant.com
▫ yandex.ru
Chords
The songbook detects nearly every chord. The available chords are listed on the ‘Choose chord’ screen. The list of chords is already huge, but not entirely complete. If you still miss chords in smartChord, you can add them from the ‘chord dictionary‘ or you can create your own custom chords. If you have added a new chord, you have to reopen the song (e.g. switch temporarily to another song and back) to get that chord recognized!
Your song text always remains unchanged in its original state. But they are parsed for lyrics, TABs, and chords and transformed into a unified presentation.
Chord names
The songbook shows the chord names according to your ‘Tone names’ and ‘Symbol’ settings in the ‘Name’ section. The intention is to see always the same chord names independent of the source of your song texts. So you’ll always get a C#, even if the original chord of the song is written as Db. But there is a songbook option to force the songbook to show the original chords. But keep in mind, that with this option activated, the transposing is deactivated!
The songbook supports the common musical notation, Solfège (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si) and the Nashville Number System (please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_number_system).



Conversion for German musical nomenclature
If smartChord detects an ‘H’ chord, it assumes the German musical nomenclature and adds a link at the top of the song. Tap on the link to convert the German musical nomenclature to the international: The conversion changes the song chords. ‘B’ chords are converted to ‘Bb’ chords and ‘H’ chords are converted to ‘B’ chords.
Fingerings
The song texts contain plain chord names without a definition of the fingering. smartChord knows all possible variations of fingerings and finds the best fitting one for you. This logic is controlled by your personal “Chord” and “Instrument” settings and your fingering favorites. Please take a look at the chords help page to understand the determination of chords. The fingerings are defined just once when the song is shown the first time. Then they are stored with the song.
You can easily replace a chord or a fingering. Tap on a chord to get a dialog with more information about it. Within this dialog, you can change the chord or its voicing for the whole song. Alternatively, you can long-press on a chord in the “Chord gallery“.
If you need to have the same chord with a different fingering in one song, create a custom chord and use it in the song where you need the other voicing.

Approach for best fingerings
- Check your “Chord” and “Instrument” settings. They are most important for fingering determination. There are reasonable default settings for beginners, intermediate players and experts which you can adopt to get the best results
- Maintain your fingering favorites, as your fingering favorites are always preferred before all other voicings
- Think about activating the ‘Favor fingering pattern’. With it, also non-fingering favorites are treated as favorites if their fingering pattern is the same as a fingering pattern of one of your fingering favorites
- Think about activating “CAGED system”. With it, every fingering is treated as a favorite, if its pattern is equal to a fingering pattern of the CAGED system. You need to use barre chords for the CAGED system. There is a very good “how to barre chords“.

Simplify songs
You can simplify each chord of a song individually to your skill level. With each simplification, a chord will lose timbre, but it will become easier to play.
The ‘Simplify chords’ screen shows each chord of a song and its simplified chords in a separate line. The simplest chords or your favorite chords are pre-selected. But you can define the level of simplification for each chord individually by selecting the original chord for ‘no simplification’ or one of the simplified chords in the line.
The simplification can be made undone by calling the menu item ‘Simplify chords’ again. You’ll get the same ‘Simplify chords’ screen again.



Instruments and tunings
When you change the instrument or the tuning in the settings, it affects all the features like chords, scales, arpeggio, tuner or circle of fifths. But it does not affect all features. Some features like the songbook, chord progression or the fretboard trainer do store the tuning when the item (e.g. the song) is created. This means that you have the same tuning with the same chords and fingerings in a song, every time you open it. Independent from the instrument or the tuning in the settings. But you can change the tuning/instrument for a song or chord progression in the menu. Then the fingerings are changed too and the new tuning is stored in the item (e.g. song).
Transpose
- You can switch between all instruments supported by smartChord (menu ‘Edit -> Change instrument’). The fingerings for the chords are automatically adjusted to the new instrument. Your fingering favorites are used preferably.
- You can switch between every tuning (menu ‘Edit -> Change tuning’). The fingerings for the chords are automatically adjusted to the new tuning. Your fingering favorites are used preferably. Your tuning may have a capo set.
- smartChord allows you to transpose every song any number of steps up or down (change the key of the songs; menu ‘Edit -> transpose’). You can use transpose using the capo or independent from the capo.
- Each song can be transposed, independent from its source. The song is kept in the original source with the chords. If you edit a song, you’ll get the original chords. But if you like, use the menu to keep the result of transposition as the original song.
- There is an option to keep the fingerings when transposing with the capo.

Import
There are multiple ways to import your songs into smartChord. You can import the song files from your smartphone or your cloud. These can be files like cho, crd, chopro, chordpro, tab, text. You can import songs also comfortably via the browser of your computer.
Our video leads you through the import process:
s.mart Online Songbook Importer
▫ It allows you to import new songs comfortable via the browser of your computer
▫ You can import a bunch of songs at once using the ChordPro directive {new_song}
▫ Find it here: http://www.smartchord.de/song/import
Edit
There are multiple ways to edit a song.
Edit on device
Use the menu to get to the edit screen to edit a song on your device.
The edit screen provides search & replace, copy & paste, undo & redo and a songbook-specific menu to easily add and edit ChordPro and smartChord specific directives.


There is also the possibility to mark blocks or add scroll breaks directly in the songbook. Or a dedicated information screen to edit song information like title, subtitle, artist, arranger, … This video shows all possible ways to edit your songs directly on your device:
Online song editor
The online song editor allows you to edit your songs comfortable in the browser of your computer
- Activate the ‘Edit song text online’ mode in the songbook
- Enter http://www.smartchord.de/song/edit in the browser of your computer
- ▶ Our video shows the editing process:
The online song editor supports
- ChordPro and smartChord specific directives
- Syntax highlighting
- Search & replace
- Undo & redo
- Word-wrap support
- Full-screen mode



Edit in your cloud
Synchronize your songs with your cloud. During synchronization, the songs are stored as text files in your cloud. From your PC, you can access and edit these files in the cloud. With the next synchronization, the changes are imported into the songbook.
There are multiple possibilities to share a song or multiple at once.
- You can use the print dialog to generate a PDF file and share this
- You can synchronize the songs with a folder in your cloud and share the folder with your friends or bandmates
- You can use the share feature
- You can export the songs within a set list
Share your songs with the smartChords share feature. It’s the same for all kinds of items like exercises or songs. Please see our video on how to share:
Export set list
- Option to export as text or HTML
- Option to include the whole songs or just the lyrics
- Option to include ‘table of content’
- Option to include notes
- Export as text can be used e.g. to share it with your audience or to copy it into the clipboard
- Export as HTML can be used to open it in a browser to print it or create a PDF file

Online song viewer
The online song viewer presents your song in any browser.
- You can sing with your audience and show them the lyrics of the current song in any browser
- Just go to http://www.smartchord.de/song e.g. in the browser of your smart TV
- It shows automatically the current song, also if you switch to the next
- There are different themes for daylight or in the dark pub
- Get the whole song on the screen by the multiple column layout (one to four columns)
- ▶ Our video shows the handling:
Synchronization
Using the cloud you can synchronize smartChord between your Android devices. There are currently two types of synchronization:
- Synchronize songs or set lists with files in your cloud. The songs or set lists are stored in a directory of your choice as plain text files (UTF-8 encoded). Use this kind of synchronization to share your songs or set lists with your bandmates. You can also use it to edit the files comfortably with your PC.
- Synchronization of the entries from the smartChord local storage. These are e.g. songs, set lists, drum patterns or favorite fingerings. This sync matches all entries between different Android devices. Use it to synchronize your data between your devices.
When you use the synchronization, be aware, that there is a scale factor setting in the songbook to change the default text size. It lets you share songs between devices with different-sized displays without having to adjust the text size with the pinch gesture in each case.
The following video shows the second type of synchronization:
‘Table of contents’
The ‘Table of contents’ is an essential screen to organize your songs. It …
- is the entry point to
- import,
- share,
- synchronize,
- export,
- rename or
- delete your songs.
- provides full-text search
- Can be used to search for chords, song text or arbitrary song information
- The search also supports the wildcards ‘?’ for any character and ‘*’ for 0 or more characters
- Complex search terms can be logically linked with ‘AND’, ‘OR’, ‘(‘ and ‘)’
- Option for case-sensitive search
- let you favor your songs to find them more easily
- provides different sort orders
- allows fast scrolling by dragging the scrollbar
- allows to classify and filter your songs. Please see our video about how to use categories:



‘Table of contents’ mode
The ‘Table of contents’ mode decides what you get if you start the songbook.
- If it is activated, the screen ‘Table of contents’ is opened before the songbook itself. There you can select a song and open it with the songbook. If you go ‘Back’ from the songbook, the ‘Table of content’ is shown again.
- If it is deactivated, the songbook is started immediately with the last song. To open the ‘Table of contents’, you have to use the menu item ‘Open | Manage’ from the ‘Folder’ menu.
Appearance
You can customize the s.mart Songbook to suit your taste:
- choose between 14 app themes
- over 40 predefined color variants
- switch between the light or dark mode
- special color set for printing
- select a font of your liking
Set list
The feature ‘Set list’ is a meaningful extension of the songbook and lets you organize your songs and lyrics for performance or practice. There you can combine the songs of the songbook with images and PDF files with songs.
There is a separate page for the ‘Set list link’. A sophisticated functionality that connects different devices and keeps the set list synchronous on all devices. You can use it with your bandmates during rehearsals and live performances. The ‘Leader’ of you will control the set list and all others (the ‘Followers’) will get the same song at the same time. A song on a ‘Follower’ device is opened at the same moment when the ‘Leader’ opens the song. And it is also started on all devices at the same moment when the ‘Leader’ starts his song.
Please see our video which presents the set list:






Set list link – connect bandmates
smartChords ‘Set list link’ is a sophisticated functionality that connects different devices and keeps the set list synchronous on all devices. You can use it with your bandmates during rehearsals and live performances. The ‘Leader’ of you will control the set list and all others (the ‘Followers’) will get the same song at the same time. A song on a ‘Follower’ device is opened at the same moment when the ‘Leader’ opens the song. And it is also started on all devices at the same moment when the ‘Leader’ starts his song.
Use external devices
Control the Setlist and the Songbook
The Setlist and Songbook have support for Bluetooth and MIDI devices which you can configure individually.
▫ Switch between the songs in the Setlist
▫ Scroll up or down, page up or down
▫ Start/stop the scrolling, metronome, drum machine, audio player, or the YouTube player
▫ The Bluetooth and MIDI configuration with the Setlist
▫ MIDI support needs Android 6.0 Marshmallow or newer
▶ There is a video about ‘How to configure a Bluetooth pedal’:
▶ There is a video about ‘How to configure a MIDI device’:
MIDI settings
Before you can use your MIDI devices, you have to select them in the settings. You also have to map the MIDI messages to the actions in the Setlist and songbook. Please check your settings. They are valid for the Songbook and the Setlist. To use the MIDI integration, you need to have Android 6 or later on your device. Android supports MIDI over USB or Bluetooth.

Select a song with a MIDI command
The songbook allows you to switch the songs with a MIDI command from your MIDI device. To enable the song selection you have to do these two steps:
- Select the MIDI device in the settings (MIDI source).
- Insert the directive {x_sccrd_midiSongSelect:<number>} in each song you want to select by a MIDI device. The <number> has to be between 0 and 127 or 1 and 128. This depends on your device.
If your MIDI device sends the MIDI command SongSelect (0xF3), smartChord looks for the song with the x_sccrd_midiSongSelect directive and the song number. The song number is part of the command. If a song with this number is found, the songbook switches automatically to this song. If no song with the number is defined, nothing happens. If more than one song does have this number, the first found song with the number is selected.
Control a MIDI device
You can send MIDI commands from the Songbook to a MIDI device. For that, you have to:
- Define the ‘MIDI receiver’ in the section ‘MIDI’ of the settings
- Add special directives within the song.
The directive x_sccrd_midiOpen defines the MIDI commands which are sent to a MIDI receiver when the song is opened, the directive x_sccrd_midiClose when the song is closed. Both directives are not visible in the songbook.
The directive x_sccrd_midi defines also MIDI commands, but these directives are visible as grey ‘MIDI’ lines. They are automatically sent when the scroller scrolls the song and the line reaches the top or if you tap the line.
- {x_sccrd_midiOpen: <midiCommand1>, <midiCommand2>, …}
- {x_sccrd_midiClose: <midiCommand1>, <midiCommand2>, …}
- {x_sccrd_midi: <midiCommand1>, <midiCommand2>, …}
A directive can define multiple MIDI commands. The commands have to be separated by a comma. You can have multiple MIDI directives in a song. The commands are sent according to the order in the song.
A command is defined by one or more bytes, written in two-digit hexadecimal numbers. Normally hexadecimal numbers do start with ‘0x’. For more readability, it can be omitted.
Example with two : {x_sccrd_midiOpen: 90 30 6F, 91 3A 6F}
You can get a short introduction here:
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~craig/articles/linuxmidi/misc/essenmidi.html and http://www.music-software-development.com/midi-tutorial.html
MIDI test
The smartChord tool ‘MIDI test’ can help you write MIDI commands, as it shows MIDI messages received from a MIDI device in the form you need for the MIDI directives. It allows you also to send messages to a MIDI device. This tool is available with version V7.17 or newer.

Picking patterns
You can add a picking pattern to a song in the edit screen. It adds the directive {x_sccrd_ppat}) to the song.
In the songbook, you can tap on the picking pattern to show it or listen to it.
You can also create a picking pattern exercise for a song that combines the chords of the song with the picking pattern.


Please see our video which presents the s.mart Picking Patterns:
There is a print dialog with the option to print and/or share a song via PDF.
- Option to print the chords in your color scheme or black/white
- Option to print the information as well
- Needs Android 5.0 or newer
Supported song texts and formats
smartChord can handle every plain text file (there is an example at the end of the help). Also, a widespread format for songs is ‘ChordPro’. It is supported essentially. Please consult the official reference page: ChordPro
smartChord uses this format to enhance the song text by song information like tuning, scroll speed, audio file, … If you use the possibility to ‘edit song information’, this information is also stored within ChordPro directives.
If you share or export a song to a file, the file contains the song text and the information in form of ChordPro directives. The file gets the name of the song and the file extension ‘.sccrd’ (UTF-8 encoded). You can view/edit these files with every text editor or ChordPro viewer/editor that supports UTF-8 character set.
Supported ChordPro directives
Directives with information like album or arranger can be comfortably edited by the menu ‘Edit song information‘
- {album}
- {arranger}
- {artist}
- {bridge} repeats the previous block defined by {start_of_bridge} and {end_of_bridge}
- {chorus} repeats the previous block defined by {start_of_chorus} and {end_of_chorus}
- {comment_box}
- {comment_italic}
- {comment}
- {composer}
- {copyright}
- {duration} it is used to define the initial scroll speed; When an audio file is added to the song, the ‘duration’ is initialized by the duration of the audio file
- {end_of_bridge}
- {end_of_chorus}
- {end_of_interlude}
- {end_of_pre_chorus}
- {end_of_verse}
- {end_of_tab}
- {highlight}
- {interlude} repeats the previous block defined by {start_of_interlude} and {end_of_interlude}
- {key}
- {lyricist}
- {meta}
- {pre_chorus} repeats the previous block defined by {start_of_pre_chorus} and {end_of_pre_chorus}
- {soc} abbreviation for start_of_chorus
- {start_of_bridge}
- {start_of_chorus}
- {start_of_interlude}
- {start_of_pre_chorus}
- {start_of_verse}
- {start_of_tab}
- {subtitle} it is used to build up the name of the song together with the title, if no name is specified otherwise
- {tab} repeats the previous TAB block which can be optionally defined by {start_of_tab} and {end_of_tab}
- {tempo}
- {time}
- {title} it is used to build up the name of the song together with the subtitle, if no name is specified otherwise
- {verse} repeats the previous block defined by {start_of_verse} and {end_of_verse}
- {year}
Repeating blocks
Songs are often made up of repeating parts of text. With the following directives you can easily repeat text parts. The Songbook displays the corresponding text part instead of the directive.
- {bridge}
- {chorus}
- {interlude}
- {pre_chorus}
- {tab}
- {verse}
So the {chorus} directive shows the content of the previous chorus defined by {start_of_chorus} and {end_of_chorus}.
Each of these directives can contain optional text (e.g. {interlude:Outro}). The text defines the name of the block. If it matches the name of a block to repeat, the block with that name will be selected for repeat. If there is no block with the exact name, the last block is selected. It one gets the new name.
{start_of_verse:Verse 1} A C This is verse 1 {end_of_verse} {start_of_bridge:Bridge} A C E F Fm This is the bridge {end_of_bridge} {start_of_pre_chorus:Pre chorus} A C E F Fm This is the pre chorus {end_of_pre_chorus} {start_of_chorus:Chorus} A C E F Fm This is the chorus {end_of_chorus} {start_of_interlude:Interlude} A C This is the interlude {end_of_interlude} {start_of_verse:Verse 2} A C This is verse 2 {end_of_verse} {bridge:Bridge repeated} {pre_chorus:Pre chorus repeated} {chorus:Chorus repeated once} {interlude:Interlude repeated} {verse:Verse 2 repeated} {chorus:Chorus repeated twice}
{verse:Verse 1}

Custom ChordPro extensions
There are custom extensions of ChordPro for smartChord. All of them start with ‘{x_sccrd_’.
You can use and edit the following extensions:
- {x_sccrd_href:https://youtu.be/IGM0XnuwtC8;Our songbook video} – use it to add an internet link
- {x_sccrd_dance:Name of a dance}
- {x_sccrd_genre:Genre of the song}
- {x_sccrd_ppat:PP 4/4 423} – Name of a smartChord picking pattern. Picking pattern are displayed or hidden together with the chords
- {x_sccrd_sbr:10} – stops scrolling for the defined seconds
- {x_sccrd_midiOpen: <midiCommand1>, <midiCommand2>, …} and {x_sccrd_midiClose: <midiCommand1>, <midiCommand2>, …}
– send MIDI commands from the Songbook to a MIDI device (see Control MIDI device)
All other extensions are maintained automatically by smartChord. Do not edit them!
Example song
Scarborough Fair Intro: Am Am7 Am Am7 Am Am G Am Am Are you going to Scarborough Fair C Am (C D) Am Am Parsley sage rosemary and thyme Am C C G G Remember me to one who lives there Am G G Am Am She once was a true love of mine
A song in ChordPro format could look like this:
{c:Chorus}
[E]when I'm feeling lonely and I'm s[B]ure I've had [F#]enough ..
[E]she sends the comfort coming [B]in from above
[C#]don't need no radio at all
[D]we got a [A]thing and it's [E]called radar [F#]love
{x_sccrd_n:Scarborough Fair}
Miscellaneous
- smartChord is registered in Android as a viewer and editor for (song) files with the typical extensions like .txt, .tab, .crd, .chopro. Use a file explorer on your phone to open them with smartChord.
- When you open a song, the encoding from the settings is used. If the encoding is wrong, there are wrong characters in the text. You can change the encoding in the menu after you have opened a song.
- smartChord detects the chords in the song automatically. If you have defined a fingering, it is used, otherwise smartChord calculates the fingerings according to your chord settings. You can replace each fingering. When you save a song, the fingerings are saved too.
- If smartChord detects a ‘H’ chord, it assumes the German musical nomenclature and adds a link at the top of the song. Tap on the link to convert the German musical nomenclature to the international: The conversion changes the chord name: ‘B’ chords are converted to ‘Bb’ chords and ‘H’ chords are converted to ‘B’ chords.
- You can transpose your songs to another key. You can even change to every tuning and instrument. Please be aware, that when you share a transposed song, it is shared without transposition.