Hey friends, I have long held a deep seated jealousy for sighted musicians who can read their lyrics off a lyric sheet or an IPad. So I decided to do something about it.
I came home from a songwriting retreat the other day really wishing I could have performed a new song I was working on for the other participants, but I couldn't memorize the lyrics that quickly and play my guitar. This wasn't the first time, but this time I realized I could probably do something about it, so I started working on Lyricue.
Lyricue is an ios app that reads lyrics, line by line, advanced by a foot pedal or swipes on the screen. You can type or speak lyrics right into the app, or load them in from Dropbox.
Put an ear bud in, or put on your Metas, grab your instrument and you're ready to learn a new song, work on something you're writing, or perform on stage!
If you're interested in beta testing, please follow the link and respond to the google form. I look forward to hearing from you! Questions are welcome in this thread. No, this is not a paying betatest. If you wanta do it it's because you want a solution to the problem too. Here's the link.
Comments
Ooh cool
This seems super useful. I'mma have to see how much use I can get out of it. Right now performing something I wrote involves a lot of punching in, which is obviously not ideal but this may help and at least the process of inputting my lyrics should definitely help in memorization.
Lyrics file syntax
Are you using any standard syntax for the lyrics files? If not, do you plan on having a written guide about the app's internal syntax?
Lyrics files
Hi @WellF
At it's most basic level, LyriCue is designed to load standard text files with linebreaks at each line. One easy way to load a song is just to either type, speak, or paste the lyrics into an edit box within the app.
Optionally, you may add two dashes or enclose song part headers in square brackets, but it's really not necessary.
The app can also load standard text files from a dropbox folder.
The app also understands chordpro files which contain all kinds of special syntax for displaying chords and lyrics. These can be found all over the internet, I've amassed quite a library of them. They can then be loaded into LyriCue from the dropbox as well.
I've actually trained my ai assistant to create chordpro files for some songs.
The app loads them in which means that it puts them into a json blob for it's internal processing. That file stays on your phone.
I hope that's useful. Let me know if you have other questions.
Rusty
More on lyrics files
If you are creating your own lyrics files for LyriCue, maybe the most important thing to think about is phrase length and not line length. How much can you remember and sing before you need more? What phrases make sense?
When a song is presented on the page, it is generally structured in lines, Often lines that rhyme. But when singing the song, the line may be divided into smaller sections, rhythmically or for other reasons based on prosody.
LyriCue can read an entire line, or break the lines into smaller sections based on number of words. The problem is that it is not smart enough to know how a singer should sing it.
So, one solution is, when you create your song files, divide your lyrics by line breaks into appropriate singable chunks.
The other solution is to try the settings, short, medium or long and accept that LyriCue may break up the lines strangely. Or, you could turn off it's linebreaking logic and listen to the lines as they were written in the text file.
Thanks and a suggestion
By default, the app will use the system language voice to read the lyrics, which isn't that great when you can sing in different languages. I honestly don't know how it could be solved, like you can change the voice but doing this manually each time you need to read in a different language is not the best way IMO.
When adding lyrics, we could have an option to set the language so the app will change to the appropriate voice to read it.
Other suggestion I have is to add the back gesture associated so we can go back from the lyrics to the library or from the settings to the lyrics screen.
Thanks and keep doing this great job!
Foot pedal
Oh, this could be lovely for karaoke. Could you implement a feature where if you type in a song it can look up the lyrics from someone like lyrics genius? Also, where exactly do I get a foot pedal that would work with this?
Foot pedals are affordable lyrics maybe not so much
Hi @techluver
Thanks for your interest. Please fill out the survey and become a tester.
About Karaoke, exactly!!!! This was one of my ideas as well. The lyrics are tricky. When you install the app you'll see an experimental feature which attempts to do just this, it uses AI to do a search and paste the lyrics in. The problem is that all of the good lyrics sites recognize the method I'm using as an automated search so they block it. The AI also refuses to do the necessary copy/paste/format for copyright reasons. We figured out a way around this, but finding complete lyrics on sites other than the good ones has proven to be difficult.
Just as a side note, what we're doing isn't any different than others who might type out or copy down the lyrics of a favorite song so they can sing it for themselves. But the AI is being careful.
So, the feature which is in there now is experimental and honestly, usually doesn't get the complete lyrics.
There are two paths from here. Pay the licensing fees and get lyrics through a lyrics api, I'm investigating this but it could be crazy expensive and therefore not a real option right now. Or use an AI assistant of your own and ask it to put lyrics in your drop box. I am currently doing this and it works very well!
About the pedal: for Karaoke you might not even need it. You can swipe through the lyrics one line at a time with one finger in the app.
But, pedals are affordable. I purchased a Joyo page turning pedal from Amazon for about $30. It works great, it is recognized by the app as soon as you connect the bluetooth.
There are more expensive models if you want to go that way.
Hope that helps.
Rusty
Other languages
Hi @WellF
Thanks for the language suggestion. I'm looking at it right now. It seems like apple has an auto language detection feature which can be used on the lyrics. We can slo have a language tag as a backup. Stay tuned.
About the "back" command. What do you mean exactly. There is a back button at the top of each page to go back. You are correct though, on the lyrics screen, there is no back button, only the "library" button.
Are you suggesting a back button at the top of the lyrics page to go back to the library, or some other kind of back command?
Back gesture
It's the z like shape you do with voiceover to go back to the previous screen. You can find examples on the settings app.
Also, for getting lyrics, just open genius on your pc, select the text and put it in a text file. No AI needed.
multi-language and escape gesture added
Hi @WellF The latest build, build 11 now has multi-language support. As long as you have the correct language downloaded, it will attempt to figure out which language the song is in and change the voice. There are two modes for this which can be changed in the voice settings. Plese let me know how it goes. Feel free to email.
THanks
Will check it this weekend and reach out with my impressions.