I have been making personal song sheets for the music I want to learn and perform since I was a teenager. When I started creating music sheets, I hand-printed the lyrics and chords on ring-binder notebook paper. My first collection of maybe sixty songs was lost at sea (long, funny disaster story), so I started a new collection on Steno pads. The pads were convenient because I could always carry one in the guitar case (between the strings and the sound hole!). Over time I filled out five pads totaling about 200 songs.
Then came the computer/Internet revolution and I switched my collection media to word processed sheets, with meticulous formatting done in Microsoft Word. The switch to digital allowed me to add additional information and graphics to each music sheet. When completed, each sheet was printed, then inserted into a plastic ring-binder sleeve. I had three, 2-inch ring binders full of custom formatted lyrics and chords. Although the editing was time-consuming, it was a work of love and the pages were well presented and informative. I was happy to have them, but the problem was transporting these bulky books and managing all that plastic and paper.
Back in 2015 I came across LinkeSOFT Songbook, version 3.2.1. It seemed the perfect solution to store my music collection. The fact that it was a cross-platform application was the clincher for me. I could build my database comfortably on my PC and immediately have it available on my tablet and, in a pinch, on my smartphone via a cloud drive. I could finally take my entire music sheet collection with me wherever I go! Over time I found Songbook’s feature set was just what I needed and incredibly useful. And, obtaining and converting a tabbed text file to ChordPro format was fast and easy. Thank you LinkSOFT!
The ability to create play/set lists is great. Song chords can be transposed on the fly and have access to a full set of chord diagrams – provided you store the songs in ChordPro format. If a chord does not exist, it can be defined within the song or added to the chord database. Finally, each song can have as many user-defined “tags” as needed to organize them into categories. For example, song genre (Rock, Blues, Reggae, etc.), tempo (Slow, Fast, Moderato, etc.), Decade (Sixties, Seventies, and so on), etc. The possibilities here are endless.
There is much more to this application. All will be discussed on the posts to follow.
NOTE: This is not a paid advertisement. I simply use Songbook daily and want to share what I have discovered regarding its feature set, and how I use the product for my personal collection of favorite music.
Recent Comments