The song library

The library is every song your church keeps. The order of service is what you are singing today.

Songs live in the Library, beside decks, pictures and videos. The Library opens on a search over all of it and a row per kind: Songs lists every song whatever its folder, and Files is the folders. Find song (Cmd+L, Ctrl+L on Windows) opens Songs with the search ready: type a title, words from the lyrics, a tag or a song’s number. Press Enter or double-click a song to open its page, where Edit song changes the words.

To change a song while another song or a Bible passage is on the screen, right-click it and choose Edit in side panel, or pick the same item from the ⋯ menu on its page. The editor opens in a column beside the page, and you keep showing songs and verses from the page as usual. Esc in the column gives the arrow keys back to the page. Side panel moves an edit you started on the page into the column, and Open as page in the column moves it back, with everything you typed. If the page goes somewhere else before you save, the edit moves into the column by itself. Closing BibleLook with an unsaved song asks about it first. A song that is on the screen shows your saved changes from its next slide.

Your church’s library

When your church has BibleLook Plus, the library on each of its computers and in the web app is your church’s: everyone from Team up sees the same songs and edits them. Each computer and each browser keeps its own copy, so a song opens and saves with the internet off, and the change goes to everyone else once it is back (Working offline). Without Plus, a computer keeps its songs under On this computer, and they join the church’s library when the church gets Plus.

A church can add workspaces beside its library, for the youth or the choir. A song in a workspace can be used in that workspace’s services, and so can every song in the church’s library.

Two people can edit the same song at once. If they change different parts, or one renames it while the other edits the words, both changes stay. If they change the same lines, the first save stays and the second is saved beside it as a copy named after whoever saved it, such as Amazing Grace (conflicted copy, Hall PC, 14 Oct). A notice says so and opens it: keep the version you want and delete the other. A song deleted on one computer while someone edits it on another comes back with the edit.

Folders

A folder of songs is a songbook: Christmas, Communion, Youth. A song is filed in one folder or none. Create › New song makes one in the folder you are in. Paste a song, or pasting text onto the Library, turns copied words into a song there: plain words, a chord chart with the chords above the lines, or ChordPro. The preview shows the parts it found before anything is added. Each paragraph becomes a part. A paragraph written out twice is the chorus, and so is the unnumbered one among numbered verses. A chorus printed once is sung after every verse.

Deleting a song, or a folder with songs in it, sends them to the trash at the foot of the tree. Undo in the notice brings them straight back, and Restore in the trash does later. Delete forever there removes them for good, after asking. A song that is live, here or on another of the church’s computers, stays until it is hidden.

Writing a song

Lyrics are split into parts, each with a kind: verse, chorus, bridge, ending, intro. The kind is what colours the part in the playlist and what labels it on screen if the theme shows labels.

The editor has Words, Translate once the song has a second language, and the song’s order beside them (Order on the web and in the side panel).

In Words you type each part as on paper, in the song’s main language. An empty line starts a new slide, and the editor marks where each one begins. Where a part is longer than one screenful, split it this way rather than letting it shrink to fit. The split is part of the song, so it is the same next time. A song imported with empty lines inside its parts shows them as slides too, and they become slides when you save the song.

More than one language

Add translation gives a song another language, and the editor gains Translate. Make primary decides which language leads. Translations are written in Translate, one language at a time and slide by slide: each slide in the main language sits above a field for its translation, with how many of its lines you have written. A slide translated shorter is padded, so the next one still starts where the main language’s does. Lines past the main language’s count move to the next slide, and the editor says so. In Words, each part shows how many of its slides each translation has.

Chords

Chords are written with the words, in the song’s main language, and never reach the projector. The congregation reads the words; the chords are for whoever is playing.

While you edit a part’s words, a row of chords sits under them: the ones the song already uses first, then the chords of its key. Put the caret where the chord belongs and tap one. With the caret on a chord, a tap changes it and × removes it; + takes any other chord by name. With a keyboard, Alt+1 to Alt+9 (⌥1 to ⌥9 on a Mac) put in the row’s first nine chords, and Backspace takes a chord out whole. A chord can also be typed in brackets, [D].

A stage theme can show them. Its Chords element draws the whole part with each chord over the syllable it was written against, in the song’s current key and in your notation. The shipped stage theme has one already, and any theme’s songs section can add it in the theme editor. A song with no chords shows its words there as plain lines.

A song can carry its key, and chord names can be written in either notation: B as English, or H as it is read across much of Eastern Europe. Set that once and every song follows it.

Importing

Songs can be imported rather than typed: Create › Import songs, or drop the files on a folder. The import reads OpenLyrics (.xml, or a zip of them from OpenLP), ChordPro (.cho, .chopro, .chordpro, .crd) and plain-text songbooks (.bl, .txt). What arrives keeps its parts and its chords where the source marks them.