BandInKey help

BandInKey keeps your band on the same page. Your songs with chords, your sets, your keys and tempos - on every phone, tablet and computer in the band at once. One device leads, the others follow.

This is the same help text that is inside the app, where it works with no internet connection. It is here as well so you can read it before you buy, and on a bigger screen.

The three tabs

At the bottom of the screen:

• SONGS - your whole library. Search, open a song, add new ones.
• SETS - the running orders you build for an evening.
• SETTINGS - everything about this one device, plus the band link, the singers and this help.

Open a song by tapping its title. Everything you press on stage (key, tempo, click) is on the song card itself, in both the Songs tab and inside a set - so you can also pull up a single song a singer asks for on the spot.

Adding songs

Three buttons at the top of the Songs tab:

• NEW SONG - type it yourself. Title, artist, the text with chords, and your own notes. A preview shows how it will look on stage.
• PASTE TEXT - copy a sheet from a website or a message and paste it in. The app reads it and lines the chords up over the syllables.
• FROM A FILE - take a sheet off this device. The file window shows readable files in white; anything the app cannot read stays grey and cannot be picked.

However a song arrives, you can still fix it afterwards: open it, then the menu at the top right.

Which files the app reads

These are read:

• Plain text: .txt, .text, .md, .rtf
• ChordPro: .cho, .chordpro, .chopro, .crd, .pro
• Word: .docx
• A file with no extension is tried as plain text

These are NOT read:

• PDF. Open the PDF, copy the text and use PASTE TEXT instead, or save it as .txt.
• Old Word (.doc). Open it in Word and save it as .docx or as plain text.
• Pictures of sheets. Nothing is read out of a photo.

This is the honest list - it is what the app can actually do today, not what it hopes to do.

Why some websites give you lyrics but no chords

On some chord sites the chords are not written as text at all. They are drawn above the line, one little box per chord. When you copy the page, the chords stay behind and only the lyrics travel. Nothing is broken on your side and nothing is broken in the app: the copy really did come away empty.

How to tell a good page in one glance:

Drag your mouse or your finger across two or three lines of the song, the way you would select text in a document. • If the highlight sweeps over the chords AND the lyrics in one motion, the page is good. • If the chords stay unhighlighted, or light up one by one like little boxes, the page is no good.

The test that never fails: paste it into the app. If the warning "no chords found" appears, the page was one of the bad ones.

What it looks like on screen tells you nothing. Some pages look crooked and paste perfectly. Only the paste counts.

Pages that were tested

Each of these was copied off the page and run through the app.

They work: • tabulaturi.ro - chords land right above the syllable • ultimate-guitar.com - clean; section names like [Chorus] come in as notes, not as chords • azchords.com - clean; skip the guitar tab lines (e--3--3--) • acorduri25.blogspot.com - clean; often only the first verse carries chords • github.com/traiansf/chitara - a free songbook of 738 songs, written in exactly the format the app reads best. Take it from the raw Caiet-chitara.md file, not from the pretty page. • resursecrestine.ro - works, but poorer: chords sit at the start of the line instead of above the syllable

They do not work: • chordie.com - chords are drawn, copying brings none • guitartuna.com - one box per chord, all of them stuck to the left margin

Any page not on this list: use the drag test above.

Placing the chords yourself

If a page would not give you its chords, put them in by hand. You never have to type a bracket or a code.

Open the song, then the menu at the top right, then PLACE THE CHORDS.

1. Tap the syllable the chord falls on. 2. Tap the chord in the rows at the bottom. It jumps above that syllable straight away.

The top row gives you the chords of the key the band is playing in - one tap each. Below that are all the notes, and the chord type (minor, 7th, and so on).

Missed the syllable? The arrows nudge the chord one letter left or right. There is also delete, and one step back.

You work in the key the BAND plays in, not the key the sheet was written in. The app does the arithmetic when it saves, and the stored text keeps its own original key, untouched.

The stage screen

Black background, big adjustable text, chords in their own colour, and the screen never goes to sleep while it is open.

• Scroll with your finger as you play.
• The two letter buttons at the bottom make the text bigger or smaller.
• A Am / H / La m switches how chords are written: letters, German H instead of B, or Latin do-re-mi names. This is per device - you can read H while the next player reads Am.
• TWO COLUMNS (in the menu at the top right, or in Settings) fits more of the song on a wide screen in landscape.
• Opened from a set, the whole set runs as one long sheet: when a song ends the next one is already there, no going back to the list. The song at the top of the screen is the current one - the title, the key and the buttons all follow it, and that is what goes out to the band.
• The PREVIOUS and NEXT buttons at the bottom jump a whole song, for when the evening skips one.

The menu at the top right holds: save the key, edit the song, place the chords, and the two-column switch.

Changing key

Three square buttons sit next to the title: [-] [0] [+].

• [-] and [+] move the song one semitone at a time. The chords in the text move with it, immediately, and on every device in the band.
• The middle button shows how far the song has been moved (0, +2, -1). Press it and the song goes back to its saved key.

Next to the buttons you see two keys: the saved one and the one you are playing right now. A moved song also gets an orange outline on its card, so you can see at a glance that it is not where it was.

A change like this is temporary - it lasts for the evening. To keep it, press the little save icon on the card (or SAVE THE KEY in the stage menu) and choose: • FOR EVERYONE - this becomes the band key for that song. • FOR ONE SINGER - it is kept in that singer's profile only.

CLOSE THE EVENT, at the bottom of Settings, drops all the temporary moves at once and puts every song back to its saved key.

Different thing, same word: SONG KEY inside the song editor rewrites the sheet itself - the chords really move and the new key becomes the song's original. Use that only when the sheet was written in the wrong key to begin with.

Tempo and time signature

Each song carries its own tempo, and in a set each song shows its own - so three songs with three tempos stay three tempos.

• Tap the bpm number to tap the tempo in with your finger. Keep tapping and it follows you.
• Press and HOLD the number to open the tempo window, where you type the number instead, change the time signature, or go back to the saved tempo.

Tempo behaves like key: the change is for the evening and goes out to the whole band on the spot, and the save icon on the card is what makes it permanent. The time signature is different - it belongs to the song (7/8 stays 7/8 whoever sings it), so it is written down straight away.

The click for in-ear

The big click button sits on the stage screen, away from the key buttons so it cannot be hit by accident. It only appears on the device that is in command: the click goes out from the leader.

• One tap - click on or off, at the current song's tempo.
• Press and hold - the click window: volume, count-in, and the click test.

While it runs the button blinks on every beat and shows which beat you are on, so you can see from across the stage whether the leader is on one. The count-in beats one bar first, in a different colour, so nobody mistakes it for the song.

THE CLICK TEST measures how well this particular device can hold a click. Start it, let it run for a minute, then come back and read it: it tells you the gaps in the sound, the worst moment, and whether this device keeps up. Worth doing once on every device before a gig - an old tablet can struggle.

GIVE THE CLICK hands the click to one of the members (the drummer, usually), from the click window. Everyone then sees whose click it is, and the leader can take it back at any time.

Singers

Settings > SINGERS. Every singer gets a profile with their own keys, per song.

Pick a singer at the start of the evening - or in the middle of it - and every song moves into that singer's keys by itself. NO SINGER means the band's own keys.

The singer in use is shown on a bar at the top of the home screen, so nobody has to guess whose keys are on the stands. Give each singer a colour and you can also mark in the lyrics who sings what.

A set can have its own singer: open the set and pick one. Leave it on NOT TIED TO A SINGER if the set is sung by whoever is there.

Sets

A set is the running order for an evening.

• Make one in the SETS tab, give it a name.
• ADD SONGS picks from the library.
• Drag a card by its handle to move a song up or down.
• The card menu removes a song from the set, and the set itself can be renamed or deleted.

Tap a title and the set opens on the stage screen as one continuous sheet. From there you only come back to the list if you want to change the order.

Each card inside a set shows its number, its tempo and its key, in fixed columns, so your eye finds the same thing in the same place on every row.

Playing together: leader and members

Nothing on the network starts by itself. Somebody has to press.

Settings > BAND LINK: • I AM THE LEADER - this device leads. Turn on your hotspot first, or have everyone join the venue's Wi-Fi. • JOIN - join the leader's hotspot, then press this. The device finds the leader on its own; if it cannot, you can type the leader's address by hand.

There is one leader in a session. If a leader is already on the network, the app says who it is and offers to join them instead.

What the leader does, everyone sees: the song, the set, the key, the tempo, the scroll position, the chosen singer. A badge at the top right of the screen always says where you stand - leader, member, or alone.

On a member's screen the song arrives whole, over the network, so a member with an empty library still sees what the band is playing, and somebody who joins halfway through lands exactly where the others are. A member has two things of their own: the FOLLOW THE LEADER switch (turn it off to scroll by yourself and back on to snap to the leader again) and the chord notation they read in. The leader's buttons do not appear on a member's screen at all.

If the leader drops out

If the leader's device dies or loses the network, the others are asked: "The leader is not responding. Who takes over?"

The first one to press I WILL TAKE COMMAND becomes the leader, and the evening carries on from where it stopped - same song, same place in the song, same keys and tempos, the click included. Everyone else is told who is holding the chair.

When the old leader comes back, the chair is NOT taken away from whoever is holding it. The returning device joins as a member and is offered the button: press I WILL TAKE COMMAND to take it back. Whoever gives up the chair also gives up their own leftover changes - the band carries on with what is on the stands now, not with what was on the stands before the fall.

LEAVE THE CHAIR hands leadership over on purpose, without anything falling over.

The band library

Two ways to get everybody the same songs.

Over the air, with no file - the quick way at a rehearsal: • On the leader: Settings > Band link > SEND THE LIBRARY TO EVERYONE. The others get asked whether to accept. • On a member: the same screen > ASK THE LEADER FOR THE LIBRARY. • Under each device name in the leader's list it says "same library" or, in orange, "different library", so you can see who is out of step before the first song.

As a file - for sending across town: • EXPORT THE LIBRARY makes one file with your songs, sets and singers. Send it however you like. • IMPORT A LIBRARY reads such a file and asks whether to REPLACE your library or ADD to it. Songs you already have are not added twice, and the app tells you how many were skipped.

Bluetooth page-turner pedal

A page-turner pedal works straight away - there is nothing to set up in the app. Pair it with the device's Bluetooth and it is ready: the device sees it as a keyboard, and the app listens for the keys these pedals normally send (arrows, page up and down, space, enter).

On the stage screen one press scrolls a page down, and at the end of a song it moves on to the next song in the set by itself. The other pedal goes back a page.

Settings for this device

These belong to the device, not to the band - the leader can be in Polish while a member reads in Latin note names, in the same session. Only data travels between devices, never interface text.

• CHORD NOTATION - A Am, H, or La m.
• TEXT SIZE - with a live sample underneath, so you can see it before you walk on stage.
• TWO COLUMNS IN LANDSCAPE.
• CLICK - volume and count-in.
• BAND NAME and DEVICE NAME - what the others see in the band list.
• LANGUAGE - nine languages, at the bottom of Settings. Each one is written in its own language, so you can find yours whatever the app is set to now. (This help is in English only.)

Device log

Settings > DEVICE LOG writes down, to the millisecond, what the app is doing. It is off unless you turn it on, and it is meant for one thing: chasing a fault.

If something misbehaves, turn the log on, make it happen again, then VIEW, COPY or SEND the log. DELETE empties it. Turn it back off afterwards.

Ending the evening

Three different sizes of stopping, at the bottom of Settings:

• CLOSE THE EVENT - every song goes back to its saved key and tempo. The band link stays up.
• LEAVE THE SESSION - this device steps out of the band link. Your library and your settings are untouched.
• QUIT - breaks the links, closes the session and closes the app. It asks first, because after it there is nothing left to press. Next time the app opens alone, from scratch.

Nothing you saved is ever lost by any of the three: songs, sets, singers and saved keys stay on the device.

Still stuck

Write to contact@bandin.ro or send a message on WhatsApp. A musician reads it, not a ticket system.