Lyrics

Working with lyrics is one of the core functionalities of Stage Traxx. This section of the manual explains how to work with the integrated lyrics editor. You can access this editor from the Song Details screen by tapping on Edit Lyrics.

The lyrics editor

The lyrics editor is basically a text editor with a special toolbar:

Tapping on the icon is a shortcut to insert two brackets for entering chords or other tags described further below.

The icon will open the midi learn dialog. See Learn MIDI commands for details on how to use this function.

You can also control playback and select a playback position of the selected song and automatically insert time codes of the current playback time.

Keyboard Shortcuts

It is recommended to connect a keyboard to edit lyrics. This will speed up editing considerably. To further support the keyboard usage, Stage Traxx offers a number of shortcuts you can use in the editor:

Shortcut	Description
cmd + b	Format selected text bold
cmd + i	Format selected text italics
cmd + b	Format selected text underline
cmd + shift + space	Start/stop playback
cmd + shift + t	Insert a timecode at the current position
cmd + shift + m	Learn MIDI at the current position
cmd + shift + b	Insert brackets at the current position
cmd + ctrl + 1	Toggle color of selected text to red
cmd + ctrl + 2	Toggle color of selected text to orange
cmd + ctrl + 3	Toggle color of selected text to yellow
cmd + ctrl + 4	Toggle color of selected text to green
cmd + ctrl + 5	Toggle color of selected text to teal blue
cmd + ctrl + 6	Toggle color of selected text to blue
cmd + ctrl + 7	Toggle color of selected text to purple
cmd + ctrl + 8	Toggle color of selected text to pink

Adding lyrics to songs

Lyrics embedded in audio files

Stage Traxx will automatically detect and display lyrics embedded in the ID3 Tag of an audio file. You can use any tag editor to populate this tag before importing a file into Stage Traxx. I can recommend MP3Tag for Windows and Metadatics for macOS.

You can edit lyrics in the lyrics editor. Please note that once you change lyrics in the editor and save them, they will be stored in the Stage Traxx database and not in the audio file. You can revert back to the lyrics embedded in the file by tapping on the button in the navigation bar and selecting Reset Lyrics.

Import from file

Stage Traxx can import lyrics from files in the lyrics editor. The following file formats are supported:

• Plain text files (file suffix .txt)
• ChordPro files with a limited set of features (file suffix .cho or .pro)
• PDF files (file suffix .pdf)
• Word documents (file suffix .doc or .docx, iOS only)
• RTF documents (file suffix .rtf)

To import lyrics tap on the button in the navigation bar to open a file browser where you can select a file in one of the supported formats.

Sharing lyrics

You can share lyrics via email, as a plain text file or a rendered pdf document that looks like the rendered lyrics during playback by tapping on the button in the navigation bar. You will be asked if you want to send an email, create a text file or a pdf document.

Text formatting

Stage Traxx uses a subset of markdown tags to define formatting in your lyrics. The following sections describe all possible formatting options.

You can either write the tags directly into the lyrics or use the context menu of the lyrics editor to add formatting. The context menu supports bold, italic and underline styles:

Headings

A line starting with one ore more number signs # defines a heading. The number of # characters correspondents to the heading level. Up to 3 levels are supported.

# This is a level 1 heading

## This is a level 2 heading

### This is a level 3 heading

Bold

To define bold text, add an asterisk * character before and after a word or phrase.

This will display *bold text*.

Italic

To define italic text, add a underscore _ character before and after a word or phrase.

This will display _italic text_.

Underline

To define underlined text, add a plus + character before and after a word or phrase.

This will display +underlined text+.

Colors

Text can be rendered in different colors. To show colored text, add the tag {c:COLOR} before and after a word or phrase. COLOR can have one of the following values: red, orange, yellow, green, tealblue, blue, purple or pink

This will display {c:red}red text{c}.

Comments

You can enter comments into your lyrics that will only be visible in the lyrics editor and not in the lyrics view during playback. Each line that starts with ; is treated as a comment.

; This comment will not be visible in the lyrics view

Using automatic scrolling

Stage Traxx automatically scroll lyrics during playback if you enable the Autoscroll Lyrics setting. The following sections describe the two modes that automatic scrolling supports.

Constant scrolling speed

This is the default operation mode for automatic scrolling. Stage Traxx will scroll lyrics synchronous to the song progress. The scrolling is linear and can be modified by adjusting the scrolling speed on the player screen. The speed is displayed in form of a modifier value.

By default the scrolling speed is set to 1.0. This means that you will see the bottom end of the lyrics when the song has finished playing. In most cases this is too slow. You want to see the last couple of lyrics lines some time before the song has finished playing.

A good practice to set the song speed is to select a song in the player, then move the song position slider roughly 75% to the end of the song. Now start the playback. Stage Traxx will start scrolling the lyrics to the calculated position according to the scrolling speed. While the song is still playing, modify the scrolling speed until you see the lyrics for the current song position.

The speed setting is remembered for each song. The setting is dependent on the font size. So you might need to modify it after selecting a different font size or switching to a different screen size.

Time coding lyrics

The second option is to embed time codes into your lyrics. The player will automatically switch to the time coded operation mode if it detects a time code in the lyrics. Here is an example of a time code:

[00:34.23]

Every time code starts with [ followed by minutes and seconds and an optional millisecond value. Every value needs to have 2 digits. The timecode is terminated by ].

This time code is basically the same format as used in standard LRC-formatted lyrics. Most LRC-lyrics should work fine in Stage Traxx.

To help you add time code to your lyrics, the lyrics editor has an embedded song player and a button to place the current playback time at the cursor position:

To time code your lyrics, place the cursor at the beginning of the first line and start playback by tapping on the button above the keyboard. When the song reaches the current line, tap . This will insert the current time at the cursor position and move the cursor to the beginning of the next line containing lyrics.

If the cursor is placed inside a timestamp tag, the context menu will show an option Seek To Timestamp which will seek the player to the selected time:

With these features, it is very easy to time code your lyrics. Just play the song one time through and place time codes at the appropriate positions.

You can remove all time codes by tapping on the navigation bar button and selecting Clear Timecode.

When you download time coded lyrics, it might be necessary to adjust the timing of all lyrics by a certain amount. You can do this by adding the following line anywhere in your lyrics:

[offset:10000]

The offset command will tell Stage Traxx to add the specified number of milliseconds to every timestamp in your lyrics during playback. In the above example 10 seconds will be added to every timestamp. You can also subtract time by specifying a negative amount:

[offset:-10000]

The above command will subtract 10 seconds form every timestamp.

Adding chords

You can embed chords into your lyrics using ChordPro notation or placing them in a separate line above your lyrics.

With ChordPro notation you write chords in square brackets directly in your lyrics. For example:

[Bm]Like the legend of the [Dmaj7]phoenix

Stage Traxx will make sure that chords appear above the word where you placed them in your lyrics. The above example will be displayed like this in Stage Traxx:

Bm                     Dmaj7
Like the legend of the phoenix

You can also place chords manually in a line above the lyrics. But keep in mind that this will only work if you use a fixed width font. If you select the fixed width font option in the settings dialog, both the lyrics viewer and editor will use a fixed width font to help you with the placing of chords.

The lyrics viewer will detect lines containing only chords and highlight them with a different color so that you can distinguish them at a glance from your lyrics. You can select the color used to highlight chords in the color settings.

Stage Traxx detects chords by the following set of rules:

• Starts with the letter A-H or the number 1 - 7 followed by an optional #, b, ♯ or ♭
• Followed by an optional chord type: add, sus, 7sus, 9sus, m, min, maj, aug, dim, -, +, minmaj, mmaj
• Followed by an optional extension 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11 or 13 that can optionally be prefixed by #, b, ♯ or ♭
• Followed by another optional extension 5, 9, 11 or 13 that can optionally be prefixed by #, b, ♯ or ♭
• Followed by an optional bass note after a / that can be the letter A-H or the number 1 - 7 with an optional #, b, ♯ or ♭

The no chord symbols NC and N.C. are also recognized as chords.

Additionally you can force a whole line to be formatted as a chord line by starting that line with the ` character. No matter what you type after this character, it will be formatted as a chord. Here is where to find this character on the iOS keyboard:

Adding MIDI commands

You can embed MIDI commands in lyrics. These can be sent by Stage Traxx when the song loads, playback starts, playback stops and at specific timestamps within the song. See Send MIDI for details.

Send MIDI commands

To assist with debugging your MIDI code, you can send MIDI commands by placing the cursor anywhere inside a midi tag and opening the context menu with a long touch:

Now tap an Send MIDI to send all MIDI commands contained in the current tag.

Learn MIDI commands

Stage Traxx can learn MIDI commands from devices by tapping on the icon in the keyboard toolbar.

When tapped, Stage Traxx is waiting to receive a MIDI commands. If playback is not running, all MIDI commands received will be added into a single MIDI tag. Press Stop to write the tag with all received commands.

If playback is running while waiting for midi commands, Stage Traxx will include the current playback position so that the command will be sent at the current time during playback. A tag is written for every command received until you press the Stop button.

Display lyrics on external monitor

If you connect a monitor via lightning to hdmi adapter to your iOS device, Stage Traxx will automatically display lyrics of the current song full screen on this monitor.

The font size set for your songs might not translate well to the resolution and size of the monitor. The setting Font Size Modifier can be used to adjust the font size the resolution of the monitor.

It is highly recommended to use time coded lyrics to ensure that the monitor always displays the correct part of the lyrics.