Notes on your songs

Every kind of note in Fretlist: notes written into the song, your private My notes, and the note a song carries in a setlist. Where each one shows, how to tell the band's note from your own, how to place them in Play Mode, and how they print.

A note is anything you want to read next to the music: "capo 3 for this one", "Lisa sings the second verse", "watch the drummer for the stop". Fretlist has three kinds, and each one lives in a different place.

Three kinds of notes

A note in the song. Written into the chord sheet itself, so it travels with the song everywhere: song view, Play Mode, print and export. Anyone who can see the song sees it.
A setlist note. Attached to a song in one setlist, so the same song can carry a different note at every gig. In a band, the whole band sees it.
My notes. Your own note on a song in a band. Only you see it.

Notes in the song

Type / in the editor and pick Comment, or write the ChordPro line yourself:

You type

{c: Count in slow}
{c: Bass drops out in verse 2}
[G]Strumming on my [C]guitar tonight

Renders as

Count in slow
Bass drops out in verse 2
GStrumming on my Cguitar tonight

{comment: ...} and the short form {c: ...} both work. The line shows as a soft amber block in the sheet. Comment lines that follow each other share one block, so a two-line reminder reads as one note.

A comment that is only a section name, like {c: Chorus}, is read as a section heading instead. {comment_italic} and {comment_box} keep their own look: italic text, or a thin border.

The Comments switch under Show and hide hides these notes.

Setlist notes

Open a setlist in the editor and tap the note icon on a song's row to write a note for that song in this setlist. See Setlists.

On the setlist, the note shows under the song. In your own library it is in italics. In a band it is the band's note, so it sits behind a gray bar.

My notes

In a band, every song has a My notes box below the chord sheet. Tap Edit, type, and click or tap away: a Note saved message confirms it. My notes are private to you, whatever your role in the band, and they work offline.

My notes only exist in a band. In your own library there is no one to keep a note from, so the setlist note does the job.

Band notes and your notes

In a band, two notes can sit on the same song: the band's setlist note and your own. A colored bar on the left tells them apart:

Gray bar: the band's note. The whole band sees it.
Teal bar: your note. Only you see it.

The same bars show on the setlist and in Play Mode. On the setlist, hover over a note with a mouse and it says whose it is: Band note. The whole band sees this. or Your note. Only you see this.

In your own library, the setlist note is yours, and in Play Mode it wears the teal bar.

Notes on the setlist

On a setlist in a band, each song shows the band's note under it, then your own My notes under that, each on its own line behind its bar. So you can read through the night and see your own cues next to the band's before the gig starts.

To hide them, open the setlist's ... menu, choose Display, and switch off Notes.

Notes in Play Mode

Play Mode shows the setlist note when you play from a setlist, and in a band your My notes too. Notes are read-only there: write and change them in the song view or the setlist editor.

They use the Font you picked in Settings > Display, a touch smaller than the lyrics, and they grow and shrink with the text size.

On a wide screen (a laptop, or an iPad in landscape) the panel on the right is the sidebar. It holds your Notes and your Frets chord diagrams, and the notes sit there by default, above Frets. They stay in view while the song scrolls, so a cue for the last chorus is still there when you get to it. Close the sidebar with the button in its top-right corner (Close sidebar) and the notes move back onto the sheet, above the lyrics. If Frets is turned off in Settings > Features, there is no sidebar, and the notes always sit above the lyrics.

Move your notes

On a wide screen you choose where the notes sit. Drag them to one of three places:

Above Frets, at the top of the sidebar
Below Frets, under the chord diagrams
Above the lyrics, on the sheet, between the song's badges and the first line

With a mouse, just drag. On a touch screen, press and hold the notes for a moment until they lift, then drag. While you drag, the places you can drop them light up with a dashed outline. Both notes, the band's and yours, always move together.

You can drag Frets too: pick up the Frets heading or any chord diagram and drop it above or below the notes.

Your choice is saved to your account, so every device you play on puts the notes in the same place.

Hide your notes

Open the gear in Play Mode and switch off Notes under Show. With a mouse there is a shortcut: an eye button (Hide notes). In the sidebar it appears next to the Notes heading when you point at the sidebar; above the lyrics it appears beside the notes when you point at them. It does the same as the switch, which is where you turn them back on. Touch screens have no eye buttons: use the switch.

On a wide screen, the Notes switch also opens and closes the sidebar while the notes live there. Switching Notes off closes the sidebar only when Frets is off too.

The Frets switch works the same way for the chord diagrams, with its own eye button beside the Frets heading (Hide Frets). It hides only the diagrams: the sidebar stays open for your notes. With both off, or Frets off on a song that has no notes, the sidebar steps aside and the song gets the full width.

Notes on a phone or tablet

On a phone, or a tablet held upright, the notes sit above the lyrics. If you use Frets, the dock along the bottom can show your notes instead: when a song has notes, a Notes | Frets switch sits at the dock's top-right. Pick Notes and they stay in view at the bottom while the song scrolls. With Frets switched off, the dock is just for your notes.

Each device remembers which one its dock shows.

Notes in print and export

Notes written into the song print the way they look on screen: an amber block, with lines that follow each other in one block. Save as PDF, the browser print, and Word export all keep them. Turn on High contrast in Print & Export and the block prints on light gray with black text instead, for black-and-white printers. ChordPro and plain text exports keep the {comment} line as you wrote it.

A setlist printout can show each song's setlist note: switch on Notes in the Show group. My notes never print. See Printing and exporting.

Performing with Play Mode: the sidebar, the dock and the Show switches
Setlists: adding a note to a song in a setlist
Playing together in a band workspace: what is shared with the band and what stays yours
Show and hide: the Comments and Notes switches