You can use the menu on the right called "Help Shortcut" to navigate to the topic you are interested in.
Installation and Setup
After downloading HymnSongBook from Blackberry App World, installation will automatically run. The first time running the application you will get a prompt message like this:
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| Permission Request |
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| Security Setting |
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| Application Permission Setting |
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| Permission Detail: set Files to Allowed |
- Main Menu -
It consists of five big buttons and a number at the bottom indicating you app version.
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| Main Menu |
Descriptions:
- Songs Page
- Chords Editor
- Settings Page
- About Page
- Exit App
This is where you can choose song from the collections and display it. You can transpose chords on the fly, you can toggle your preferred color theme, or display the selected song in fullscreen mode and some other stuffs.
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| Song Display |
Descriptions:
- Search Box. You can search the song here by title only. Currently searching through the lyrics is not supported.
- Category List. You can choose songs category to filter the songs displayed on the list. You can choose all to display all songs in the collection.
- Song List. This is where all the songs within the category are listed. Click here to display the song.
- Transpose Down: This button will transpose the song down by a semitone, e.g. from D to Db.
- Neutral Key: This button will restore the song to its original key.
- Transpose Up: This button will transpose the song up by a semitone, e.g. from D to D#.
- Sharp/Flat Toggle: This button will toggle chord display between sharp and flat, e.g. C# to Db. By default chords will be displayed in the original form from the song file.
- Color Theme: This button will toggle the song display between light theme (light background with dark colored texts) and dark theme (dark background with light colored texts). By default song will be displayed in dark theme.
- Hide Chords: This button will hide the chords from the display. This is useful if you want to show lyrics only and don't really need the chords.
- Fullscreen Show: This button will display the selected songs fullscreen with all the selected settings. In fullscreen mode, you can tilt your device to change the orientation between landscape and portrait.
- Back to Main Menu: This will bring you back to the main menu.
- Song Display: Selected song will be displayed here. You can scroll the song display if the song is too long. If you tap on the displayed chord, a chord snippet will be displayed. See point 13 below.
- Chord Snippet: Tapping a chord on the display will bring this chord snippet. Chord displayed will be using your default instrument as set in the setting. You can also switch from one variation to another by using the arrowed button if there is more than one variation found in the database. To close this snippet, just simply tap on the chord diagram. Chord Snippet will notify you if the tapped chord is not in database.
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| Light Theme |
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| Chord Hide |
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| Fullscreen Show on Portrait |
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| Fullscreen Show on Landscape with Chord Snippet |
- Setting Page -
On this page, you can change display settings (e.g. font size and color), choose your default instrument and also restore default songs.
Description:
Using Chord Editor
HymnSongBook comes with built in chords database and chords editor for guitar and piano which are used by the Chord Snippet. Here you can add new chord types, edit/add/delete variation of a certain chord. Especially true for guitar, some chord has many ways to play.
- Guitar Chord Editor -
When you click edit or new on guitar chord diagram, you will see this dialog shown:
The display represents the usual guitar chord diagram with the lowest bass string (sixth string) starts from the left all the way to the highest treble string (first string) on the right. Blue dot indicates the string to be press on that particular fret. The small square with Xs and Os indicates whether the string is on play or not. X means the string is not to be played. If there is a string noted with O but has no blue dot on it, it means the string is to be played open (open string). Fret position determines the starting fret position of the diagram. Fret position 1 means the first fret displayed on the diagram is guitar's first fret, and similarly fret position 7 means the first fret displayed on the diagram is the guitar's seventh fret (which are normally indicated with some white dot mark on most guitars)
- Piano Chord Editor -
Piano Chord Editor is much more straightforward than guitar. Highlighted keys are the keys included on the chord. For example, picture above shows that chord C in piano is played by pressing the three keys.
- Chord Modifier Editor -
Chord usually comes with the base or root, e.g. C or G, and with modifier, e.g. minor or augmented usually represented with symbol to make it shorter, and so you will see chords like: Caug or Gm. Chord without modifier is called major. HymnSongBook provides 14 chord modifiers on the database by default, but you can add your own modifier using the Modifier Editor.
You will see list of modifiers. You can edit current modifier as well adding new modifier. There are still commonly known modifiers that are not in the database (e.g. eleventh or flat fifth). HymnSongBook also does not support modifier with multiple symbols (e.g. aug which sometimes written as +, or dim which sometimes is written as o). The editor does not allow you to add another modifier with the same symbol as well to prevent conflict.
Adding Songs
From v1.0.0 onward, HymnSongBook supports adding your own songs to the collection. To do this first you need to make sure permission setup is done correctly (refer to first section). If you let installation does all the required steps, you will be able to see a folder called HymnSongBook inside your Playbook documents folder. For example using Windows 7 to access Playbook folder, you will see this:
If you don't see this folder, you probably didn't give access permission during the setup. You can create HymnSongBook folder (or use the Re-add Default Songs from setting menu, it will copy all the default songs though). Inside this folder is where you categorize the songs by putting them into separate folders with the folder name as the category name. For example see the picture below. This is what you will see if you follow the setup:
Two categories: hymn and popular. Any song files under hymn folder will be categorized as hymn when you run HymnSongBook. Similarly you can create your own category here. Any song files that you put directly without category folder will be ignored. Song files that you put inside must also follow ChordPro format. Otherwise the correctness of displayed text or even the correctness of the app is not guaranteed.
If you have more questions that are not covered in this long manual, please send your questions to dwssoft@gmail.com!
On this page, you can change display settings (e.g. font size and color), choose your default instrument and also restore default songs.
Description:
- Instrument: This setting will be used to display chord diagram in Chord Snippet.
- Screen Mode: This will determine the screen mode on which the display setting are being edited.
- Color Scheme: This will determine the color theme on which the display setting are being edited.
- Preview Display: Here you can see the preview how the display for each text type will look like under current setting.
- FontSize Slider: You can adjust the size of the font for each text type using these sliders.
- Font Color: You can adjust the color of the font for each text type by clicking on the colored box to show a color picker dialog.
- Restore Default: If you messed up with the settings and you want to restore it to the original settings, tap this button.
- Save: To save changes on the setting.
- Cancel: To cancel all current unsaved changes on the setting.
- Re-add Default Songs: If by chance you did not give permission to HymnSongBook during the first time run and only give permission afterwards, you will notice that song list will be empty. You can fix this by tapping on this button. Otherwise if you edited or deleted some of default songs, you can also use this button to restore them to the original state.
Using Chord Editor
HymnSongBook comes with built in chords database and chords editor for guitar and piano which are used by the Chord Snippet. Here you can add new chord types, edit/add/delete variation of a certain chord. Especially true for guitar, some chord has many ways to play.
- Guitar Chord Editor -
When you click edit or new on guitar chord diagram, you will see this dialog shown:
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| Guitar Chord Editor |
- Piano Chord Editor -
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| Piano Chord Editor |
- Chord Modifier Editor -
Chord usually comes with the base or root, e.g. C or G, and with modifier, e.g. minor or augmented usually represented with symbol to make it shorter, and so you will see chords like: Caug or Gm. Chord without modifier is called major. HymnSongBook provides 14 chord modifiers on the database by default, but you can add your own modifier using the Modifier Editor.
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| Chord Modifier Editor |
Adding Songs
From v1.0.0 onward, HymnSongBook supports adding your own songs to the collection. To do this first you need to make sure permission setup is done correctly (refer to first section). If you let installation does all the required steps, you will be able to see a folder called HymnSongBook inside your Playbook documents folder. For example using Windows 7 to access Playbook folder, you will see this:
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| Playbook Folders |
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| Song Category Folder |
If you have more questions that are not covered in this long manual, please send your questions to dwssoft@gmail.com!
