3 little(?) things

(Phil J) #1

Some thoughts!

  • use more colours, it would be great to be able to have some more advanced editing features especially colour. Often when im playing I don’t look at the music so when I get lost I need to know where im up to quickly. If the chorus could be a different colour it would be useful. Or be able to add comments in a different colour like repeat chorus would be handy. I know this risks a lack of uniformity but the option would be nice!

  • Remember custom chords, its a pain if you don’t have time to finish inputting a song or need to alter it that the custom chords aren’t available when reopened. Maybe a quick scan of the file opened to read any existing chords and make the available would be possible?

  • Printing song sheets, I’ve had to stop doing this as the singers complain the print is too small, it would be handy have options to increase the size.

(Power Music Guru) #2

Hi Phil
Thanks for your thoughts.
[ol][li]Use more colours
This is omething that has come up before, and we have been reluctant to make the change because of preservation of uniformity. Too many colours would prevent the chords from standing out.
However, after re-reading your suggestion I think that having a third colour would be useful for comments. Of course, you could use the third colour for choruses or anything else you wanted, and it would be editable in the settings like the other colours. Having, say, black lyrics, red chords and blue comments would be quite eye-catching.
Usually comments are put in italics or in brackets to make them the same colour as the chord line, but a third colour would be good.
Ok - it’s on the TO DO list![/li][li]Remember custom chords
Yse, this has been on the list for a while and it will definitely be done. It is likely to come in a future update along with another brilliant feature we are adding - chord chart buttons which enlarge when clicked. In full screen mode Power Music will work out every chord in the song and put a button for each one in a list, probably down the side of the playlist sidebar. There would be an option to switch this feature on/off. Any thoughts or ideas of a different way of displaying this would be welcome.[/li][li]Printing songsheets
The songsheets were designed to be similar to existing lyrics books with the double column and similar font size. We will add an option to print it without the double column and offer a size selection. You can print them one by one using the print button in the main toolbar as you are given a size selection there, but that is more time-consuming. You can also save the songsheet as rtf or word (button on the top left of the report) and then change it the way you want, but it can become tricky because of the way it encloses the lyrics in frames.[/li] [/ol]
Thanks again for your feedback.

(Michael O'Connor) #3

I just want to endorse Phil’s idea of a third colour.

I also applaud your guarded approach to use of colour - it can definitely be overdone and important information can lose itself in the “rainbow washout”.

That said; I long adopted a standard for my songsheets:
Lyrics: Black
Chords: Blue
Anything else: Purple/Magenta
(Notes/tempo modifiers/flow direction etc etc.)

So three colours would suit me fine.

(Along with proportional font lyrics of course!)

Regards

Michael

(Geoff Stilwell) #4

Oh, Yes Please. I would certainly like another colour for the chorus or comments.
Thank you

(Power Music Guru) #5

Hi Refiner
Since this post we have released Power Music 4 which allows you to add annotations. This means you can ‘highlight’ choruses or sections in any colour.
Remember it only displays chord annotations in full screen mode.

(Neil Marriott) #6

Hi,

Surely, if many colours were available, it would be up to the user to decide whether colours made it easier or harder to read.

It seems it is beyond the programmers remit to decide such things.

So I say; make all colours available an let the user decide.

(Phil J) #7

While I really like the annotation function there are still benefits from having more colours available.

Annotations move depending on screen size, i often switch between my laptops 14" screen and a 22" monitor, this makes in-line annotations a problem. Different colour fonts available would allow notes in fixed places whatever size.