User Manual | Leadsheets

USER MANUAL

Welcome to LeadSheets!
Designed for musicians, bandleaders, and worship teams, LeadSheets is your all-in-one digital binder. Whether you rely on chord charts, lyrics, or full PDF sheet music, LeadSheets keeps your entire band on the same page.

Below is your complete guide to mastering the app.

1. The Song Library

The Library is the heart of your app. Here, you can view, search, and manage your entire catalog of music.

Search & Filter: Use the search bar at the top to quickly find songs by Title or Artist.
Add a New Song: Tap the "+" icon in the top right to open the Song Editor and create a new entry.
Swipe Actions: Swipe left on any song in your list to instantly export it, or tap and hold (right-click on Mac) to bring up a menu to Export or Delete the song.

2. The Song Editor

When you add or edit a song, you have a powerful suite of tools to format your music exactly how you need it.

Song Details

Basic Info: Enter the Title, Artist, and any specific notes (e.g., "Acoustic intro only").
Find Chords Online: Tap the Safari icon to instantly search the web for the song's chords. Any text you can copy can be pasted using the paste button in the editor.
BPM & Duration: Type in your tempo and song length, or use the Wand Icon to attempt to fetch the BPM automatically from your Apple Music library. You can also tap the Hand Icon to manually tap out the tempo!

Scores & Sheet Music

If you use traditional sheet music, you can attach PDFs or images directly to the song.

Add Files: Tap "Add PDF" or "Add Photos" to import your sheet music.
Assign Musicians: This is a core feature! Tap the dropdown next to an imported score (e.g., "Unassigned") to assign it to a specific musician role (like Bass, Drums, or Lead Guitar).
Edit Musicians: Tap "Edit Musicians..." to add new roles to your band. When a musician selects their role in the song view, they will only see the sheet music assigned to them!

Lyrics & Chords

LeadSheets uses an intuitive line-by-line builder for text charts.

ChordPro+: Single source of truth chord & lyrics notation system. (LeadSheets 1.5.0)
Plain Text: Standard lyrics.
Song Chords: Type chords above the lyrics. LeadSheets will automatically detect them for transposition later!
Musicians Grid: Type chords in bars. Use repetition signs and time signatures.
Remarks: Use these for section headers (e.g., CHORUS, VERSE 1).
Formatting Tricks: Use brackets for inline cues like [Acoustic Only], or type x4 at the end of a line to automatically highlight repeat markers in orange.

Row actions

On Mac, you can simply right-click a line to open a contextual menu. This allows you to create a new line, duplicate a line or section and delete a line or a section.
On iPad and iPhone, those actions are available by a left or right swipe or a long press.

ChordPro+ notation syntax

In ChorPro+ lines, you just type lyrics as normal txt. When a chord is inserted between square brackets [] inline with the lyrics, the chord will be rendered above the character it precedes. Text between curly brackets will be rendered as notes.

ChordPro+:

This could be a [Am]lyric for a [|E7]<Crash>song. {x2}

Singer view with chords:

Am E7

This could be a lyric for a song. x2

Musicians grid view:

|: Am | E7 :|

This could be a lyric for a song. x2

Drummer view:

Crash

This could be a lyric for a song. x2

3. Viewing & Playing Songs

When you tap on a song, you enter the Performance View. The toolbar at the top (or top-right) gives you total control over how you see and hear the music.

View Modes

Use the segmented control to switch how the song is displayed:

Chords & Lyrics (Guitar Icon): Displays the full text chart with chords and bar lines in a musicians grid.
Global notes are visible in this view.
Singer Mode (Microphone Icon): Displays the full text chart with chords aligned above the lyrics. For sections without lyrics, the musicians grid will be shown.
Global notes are visible in this view.
Drummer mode (Metronome Icon): Displays the full text chart with global and drummer notes.
Sheet Music (Document Icon): Displays your attached PDFs and images. If you assigned roles, use the Musician Dropdown to filter the PDFs so you only see your specific instrument's part.

Transposition & Formatting

Transpose: Tap the Tuning Fork icon to instantly transpose the song's chords into any key.
Annotate (Pencil Icon): While viewing a PDF score, tap the pencil icon to draw, highlight, or take notes directly on the sheet music.

Audio Playback & Metronome

Backing Tracks: Tap the Play button to automatically search for and play the song via Apple Music or Spotify (you can choose your preferred service in the app Settings).
Visual Metronome: If a song has a BPM saved, a pulsing metronome icon will appear in the toolbar to help you lock in the tempo before counting off the band.
Audible Metronome: click or tap the Metronome to start or stop the audible metronome.

Chord Diagrams

Click or tap a chord to see the chord diagrams for that chord.

4. Setlists

Keep your gigs organized by grouping songs into Setlists.

Create a Setlist: Navigate to the Setlists tab and tap the "+" icon to create a new list.
Add Songs: Open a Setlist and tap the "+" icon to add songs from your Library.
Reorder: Tap the "Edit" button to drag and drop songs into the perfect performance order.
Live Metrics: As you build your setlist, the app automatically calculates the total number of songs and the estimated total performance duration based on the lengths you saved in the Song Editor.
Setlist Player: Tap the first song in your setlist. Use the bottom navigation arrows (or swipe left/right on your screen) to seamlessly flip to the next song in the set without going back to the menu! The currently playing song is highlighted.

5. Exporting and Sharing

LeadSheets makes it incredibly easy to share music with your bandmates.

Export PDFs: While viewing a song, tap the Share icon to generate a beautifully formatted PDF of your chord chart, singer view or drummer view.
Share Setlists: Open a setlist, tap the Share icon, and choose "Export Data (.bandset)". This generates a custom file containing all the songs, chords, and PDFs in that set. Your bandmates can open this file on their devices to instantly import the entire gig!
Export Setlist for stage print: Open a setlist click or tap the share icon and choose export pdf.
Export Text Lists: Need to share a setlist to use in other apps? Choose "Export Text List (.tsv)" to generate a spreadsheet-friendly text list of your set.
Bulk Import/Export: Use the Document arrows in the main Library toolbar to backup your entire catalog or import multiple songs at once.

6. Settings

Tap the Gear Icon on the main screen to access your app preferences.

Theme: Force the app into Light Mode, Dark Mode, or match your device's System setting.
Music Service: Choose whether the Play button links to Apple Music or Spotify for your backing tracks. (Note for Mac users: Spotify requires the desktop app to be open).