Managing my acoustic music
 

A longtime frustration is how to manage all the songs I've learned. It's a laughable mess of manual songbooks and stuff in Word and Evernote. I want something that will allow me to:

• Quickly pull up the song I want (say when playing out)
• List the chords with the songs
• Display the song on one page (you can choose whether to just display the chord or the diagram & chord).
• Allow export the music to Word or some format so that I'm protected if the software maker goes out of business
• Allow me to quickly create new songs by pasting in the lyrics and then adding chords. Also would like to be able to quickly choose or manually create the chord variant (e.g. A as xx7655).
• EASY TO USE.
• Bonus: A tab / sheet view. I mainly want just chords and music, but when practicing or trying to remember 200 songs it can be helpful to bring up a larger view (which won't fit on one page) to aid in recall, especially for songs you haven't played in awhile.
• Works on PC and mobile devices

I've read a little about Onsong and Guitar Pro, but a little confused on where to go or what would be best.

I continue to prefer printed music in binders over apps. The binders I have mainly organized by instrument one for six string, one for 12-string, one for ukulele, as well as a couple with specific themes or for specific groups of people I play with. As for apps I use smartchord and opensong. OpenSong has tons of features, but is quirky and takes a while to learn. I think it also has features to organize songs into groups.

I've got about 50+/- songs I can recall without the music in front of me but I prefer the luxury of something I can look at or refer to. I keep trying to add to the list but at 61 my storage capacity isn't what it used to be! Oh well?

I’ve tried a few Apps including Guitar Pro but for me OnSong wins hands down. For me it was well worth investing the time to get my head around it and I can’t live without it now. It has absolutely all my songs which I can call up in a variety of ways including sets for particular gigs which gives me an historical record of what I played where.

Does Onsong have tablature capability or is it only to show chords and lyrics?

It looks like you can edit Onsong files on a PC but they only display on iOS. That is, there isn't a Windows PC display capability or app.

One thing I also definitely want is that the songs have to be downloadable to your phone or PC. I don't want to be dependent on wireless being available outside the house to be able to see my music.

Interesting topic. I will follow along

I can't provide any kind of answer as to apps or electronics. But as I still can read off of paper better than screens I'm good with binders.

What you need for a good binder system is a way to organize your music first. you use whatever ordersuits you. Unfortunately alpha isn't so good if you continue to add more music. But whatever. Once you get all of it into a binder number each of the pieces and created an index which you can put into alpha or alpha and numeric order on the index page for quick reference. You can add tabs on the side of the music (not to be confused with tablature) so that if you see that you want Number 51 you look for the tab, grab it and open to the tune you need.

So, if you're doing a gig you can make a separate set list and list the tunes and the corresponding numbers. I play in one band that does this and I look one or two tunes ahead and put a clip where they are so I can flip to the next tune in one or two seconds. I doubt that I could be that fast with a digital system.

My 02¢ worth

I’ve used OnSong for years and always had great success with it - but, the “show entire song on one page” need has caused me to recently convert to SongBook. SongBook allows multiple columns on a single page as a view option. I’ve always used text files with either app in chordpro format so I can quickly change keys, etc. No scanning or pdf files, too limiting in the long run. SongBook runs on iOS and Windows, is editable and shareable everywhere, and again can be used wherever a simple text file can be used.

I also use the music notation (melody line, no harmonies) as well as the lyrics. Do any of the apps accommodate that?

I recently embarked on the same journey as the OP, looking for an app/program that would I could use to keep all my songs listed with access to words, music (chords, tab, etc) and other features. I ended up going in a completely different direction after stumbling onto an app for a website I had already been using for years. It will do most of the things on your list.

I no longer even bother to keep the cards I used to keep for every song. Instead I have a master set list and then I keep a separate list of edited songs that display just the chord progression. Since I'm not the singer that's all I really need. That list is only for the newer songs that I have not quite as yet mastered.

Might be worth checking out. In my case, what I thought I needed and what I actually needed ended up being two completely different things.

I did a complete write up on it here:

Guitar app (Android) review: Ultimate Guitar: Chords & Tabs

+1 for Ultimate Guitar. It checks all your boxes (I believe) except for the "whole song on one page" bit. There is a scroll function (with adjustable scroll speed), however, that should obviate that need. Works well across multiple platforms. I've used it on PC, Apple, and Samsung devices.

I've done something similar, akin to an electronic paper binder collection of sheet music, but assembled into an MS-Word document (I'm an old(er) fart and you stick with what you're familiar with). Nothing against the proliferation of guitar apps but I wanted a personal songbook that I could take with me on a laptop or tablet and access it without an internet connection. I also wanted something I could easily tinker with, tweaking the chords as I saw fit.

My songbook started out small but over the years has grown to 600+ songs. As it got bigger I added indexes and hyperlinks to make moving around easy.
And the format lets me easily parse down and create custom songbooks for each genre or a particular target audience or event if need be.

It's been suggested to me that others, especially older beginning guitarists looking for a ready-made songbook of classic songs, might find it useful since they could just delete any songs they don't want, keep the ones they do, and then call it their own.

Anyway, to that end I stuck it on a personal website if anyone wants to have a look or knows anyone that might be interested. The website is just a way to store it and make it available -- I'm not trying to sell anything to anyone.

A.T.

https://songbook19.my-free.website/

I cheat. I memorize them.

I use a three ring binder with my songs in sleeves. I have it organized and can change it around as all my songs are in my computer. I have the songs in sets sections. It's old school but it works just fine. A quick flip of the wrist from page to page. And no charging or batteries. Plus if I drop it it won't break.

If you don't organize your material now getting a program is not going to help as it will need to be set up, entered, organized and maintained.

A little off topic but hopefully helpful in a way.
I play on cruise ships a lot. The gigs are usually singer songwriter types and the audience is usually around 100. One of my goals is to have the audience sing along with me on some of the songs for various reasons, mostly to include them as participants. To do that after many years I discovered that the audience needs the words to the songs, not the chords though. IN order to allow them to choose songs and that those will be ones I know, I made up some notebooks with the words in them for the audience to choose from. After passing them out to the audience, now we can sing along and only songs I already know but they get to choose from over 200 songs. Of course, I have the same notebook in front of me. Works great for singalong. The audience really gets into it and its so easy for them. People still like to sing even if its after a few beers and margaritas by the pool.