Getting Started – The Basics
Note: Some of the changes to features in OnSong are not yet documented on the OnSong website.
- Purchase the OnSong app for your Apple device (iPad, iPhone, Mac laptop or deskop; not available Android or Windows devices, and it only works on laptops as an extension from your iOS device).
- Read and follow the Getting Started Guide. Please note that some of the documentation does not reflect recent updates to the app; however you can still probably figure most of it out, and other OnSong users will lend a hand.
- Check out these FAQs, as this will answer a lot of your questions up front.
Miscellaneous Tips, Tricks, and Gotchas
- TIP: See all the video tutorials in one place on this page.
- TIP: The knowledge base of articles and full user manual are on this page.
- TRICK: Figure out how you’d like to personalize your display (font style and size of lyrics, etc) using the Style Preferences Menu , then change all your songs to use that style with the Apply Style option (tap the three dots in the upper right).
- TIP: Use the Pitch Pipe to find your starting note(s) if you’ve got a song that kicks off with an a capella bit. Just set up a Hot Corner, and, as needed, customize with a Pitch Tag.
- TIP: Get to the full Songs list by swiping from the left (start off screen). See these other Gestures options.
- TIP: If you have to use an iPhone or iPod touch, try out Compact Mode which will help mitigate the small screen size.
- TIP: Quick edits are easy by using the Quick Chord Bar.
- TRICK: Annoyed by the four greyed out icons in the lower right of your song chart? This is called the “Live Bar” and you can turn it off in the settings. Or you might decide to give one of them a try; Autoscroll can be handy for songs with many verses!
- TIP: The Loan Shared Songs setting, when turned on, results in songs only being available to others to view; the other person won’t have the song in their library. If your intent is to fully share your song so that the other person can then permanently keep and edit the song for themselves (with no impact on your version), then make sure this is turned off.
- TIP: If you really prefer using a full keyboard to create and edit your songs, the Console feature is great, but it does require a Premium subscription. It lets you fire up a web browser window and connect to your iPad or iPhone device. You basically have both your laptop and iPad open at the same time, work on your laptop, click “Save” and see the changes on your iPad.
- TIP: Once you’ve purchase the OnSong app, you can pull it up on other Apple devices that use the same Apple ID account that was used to make the purchase. For example, you may have purchased the App from your iPad, but you can then also download the app (for free, now that you own it) on your iPhone.
- TRICK: Two jammers looking at same iPad during a jam, one with capo, the other no capo (e.g., Leslie on guitar, Susan on mandolin) – change the Chord Style to Nashville!
- RELATED GOTCHA: The gotcha is that your songs will initially be only on the device where you’ve populated them; your devices do not automatically sync your content! RELATED TIP: Even though your content is not synced, you can copy over all your content and use the second device as a backup.
- GOTCHA: OnSong, by default, uses first chord of a song to designate the key of the song. So if the first chord of your song is something other than the “1” (root) chord, that can create a mess if you use the transpose or capo features. RELATED TRICK: Every time you create a new song, be sure to set the Key to something other than “None” under Metadata.
- GOTCHA: When you email a song from OnSong, it uses whatever email account you have setup in the iOS Mail app. If you don’t regularly use the Mail app (and use instead, say, the Gmail app) then this might be confusing. RELATED TIP: If you are looking for the email itself that was sent, go to Mail and look at Sent items.
- GOTCHA: Using the “Chords Over Lyrics” format (on the back-end editor) can cause a lot of issues with spacing. RELATED TIP: We strongly recommend you always choose “Bracketed Chords” in your song editor – they will still display over the lyrics, and allow for much accurate placement.
Content Hierarchy and Organization
- Libraries
- Books
- All Songs
- Unbound Songs
- Custom
- Books
- Folders (Sets)
- All Sets (Folders)
- Custom (Folder)
- Custom (Set)
- Other Data
- Topic (tied to Keywords – Edit/Metadata/Keywords)
- Artist (as set in Metadata)
- Key (as set in a few places)
- Keywords (Edit/Metadata/Keywords)
- Icons (star, arrow, etc)