Songbook, Setlist & Chord Charts FAQ

Gig Songbook is an iOS songbook app built for gigging musicians, cover bands, and solo performers. Store lyrics and chords for every song in your library, attach backing tracks or reference audio, and perform full-screen on stage — offline-first, with optional iCloud sync and no account required.

Unlike a static PDF, your digital songbook stays searchable, filterable, and editable. Update a chord mid-gig from Performance mode, sync across devices via iCloud, attach audio and images per song, and pair lyrics with live chord charts and stem separation when you need to rehearse without vocals.

Yes. Tapping a song in your library opens a read-only song view, like a contact card: key, BPM, duration and labels at a glance, an inline audio preview, swipeable score pages (when the song uses the image view), a stage-styled lyrics & chords preview, and when (and on which device) the song was last edited. Nothing can change by accident while you browse.

From there, Edit sits in the toolbar and Rehearse launches with one tap. In a hurry? Long-press a song in the library for instant Rehearse, Edit, and Add to Setlist actions. Inside a setlist, tapping a song row instead starts the performance right from that song.

Copy lyrics anywhere — Safari, Notes, a chat — and open the Songs tab. A Paste Clipboard as New Song button appears next to the title. One tap opens the song editor prefilled: title, artist, key, BPM and lyrics are detected automatically from the pasted text (a title: / artist: header is read in full; otherwise the first line becomes the title). Review, save, done.

The button is the iOS system paste control, so there is no "allow paste?" pop-up — the app never reads your clipboard on its own; the content is handed over only when you tap. If the copied text doesn't look like lyrics (very short, just a link, or markup), the app tells you and the offer disappears until you copy something new. After a successful save the button hides too, until the next copy.

Yes. Use the sort button at the right end of the filter row: Title (A–Z, with the quick alphabet index bar), Recently Modified — newest first, grouped into Today / Last 7 Days / Last 30 Days / Older, so new and freshly imported songs sit right at the top — or grouped by Artist or Label. Your choice is remembered across launches.

Yes. Open any song from your library and scroll to the end of the read-only song view: an In Setlists section lists every setlist that contains the song, with its date, venue, and a lock badge for locked setlists.

There are three ways from the Songs list: swipe a song row, long-press a song and choose Delete (the red item at the bottom of the menu), or open the song and tap Delete Song at the bottom of the editor. Deleting from the editor takes you straight back to your Songs list. If the song is in any setlists, you'll be asked to confirm and told which ones — and either way you get a 7-second Undo (see below).

You can undo it. When you delete a song, an Undo banner with a 7-second countdown appears at the top of the Songs list. Tap it and the song comes straight back — at its original position, and back in every setlist it was part of, with its sections and any per-song settings intact.

Nothing is actually removed during those seconds: the song's audio, stems, and score images stay on disk and nothing syncs yet, so an undo leaves no trace. The delete only becomes final once the countdown ends (or when you start another delete, make another change, or leave the app).

Yes. For songs with no audio attached, tap the auto-scroll play button in the performance bar and the lyrics and chords scroll hands-free. Set a song's Duration (in the editor, next to Key and BPM) and the whole sheet scrolls over exactly that time; if there's no duration, it paces from the song's BPM instead. A speed control in the top bar fine-tunes the rate live — saved per song — and the bottom bar shows an elapsed / total time. You can still scroll with your finger at any point, and pausing freezes it in place. Songs with audio keep using the normal player and optional lyrics-follow sync instead. In a setlist, a duration-paced scroll advances to the next song when it reaches the end — and audio songs do the same the moment the track finishes — so your set rolls on hands-free, with the controls staying up on an automatic advance so you can see what's playing now.

Open the Setlists tab, tap +, name your setlist, and add songs from your library. Drag to reorder, set date and venue, then tap Play Set for full-screen performance — step through songs with the prev/next controls, or jump to any song from the floating song-picker button. You can launch Play Set straight from the Setlists list too, via the play button on each setlist's row.

Yes. Swipe right on any song — or long-press it — and choose Add to Setlist. A picker lists all your setlists with their song counts, and a green checkmark shows the ones the song is already in. Tap a setlist to add the song, tap again to remove it, and add it to as many setlists as you like in one go.

Need a new setlist? Choose New Setlist… to create one on the spot and drop the song straight in. Locked setlists are shown with a lock badge but stay protected from changes.

Yes. Add labeled sections — Set 1, Break, Encore, whatever you need — from the Add Section button or by swiping a song row to start a divider right there. Each section shows its own song count and length, and you can drag songs and dividers freely, even from one section into another. Tap a section header to rename or remove it.

You also get gig timing: the total length of every set shows in the Setlists list and setlist detail, and during a performance a subtle clock shows the current section, time elapsed and remaining, and whether you're running over or ahead of plan (shown on iPad).

Yes. Long-press a setlist in the Setlists tab and choose Save As… to create a full copy — handy when a new gig is mostly the same set with a few swaps. The same long-press menu also lets you Edit the setlist's details or Lock / Unlock it without opening it.

Yes. Lock any setlist before you walk on stage. While locked, songs cannot be reordered, deleted, or edited — preventing accidental changes during a live set.

A locked set also plays each song with the stem mix you set up — Original, 2 stems, or 4 stems, with your muted parts and levels — instead of reverting to the original track. The stem picker and mixer are hidden so the mix can't change mid-gig; it just plays as frozen.

Yes — via export. Tap ⊙ → Export Setlist to create a portable file with the setlist, all songs, audio, stems, and images. Share via AirDrop or Messages; your bandmate imports it into their Gig Songbook in one step.

Real-time shared setlists (live updates for the whole band) are planned for a future update.

Yes. In Performance or Rehearse mode, open the chord panel to see chord charts for every chord in the current song. Toggle between Guitar and Piano; tap any chord for a larger view with every voicing at once — guitar shows the standard shapes spread across the neck (open, barre, and mid-neck positions), piano shows root position plus inversions. Charts render on-device — no internet required.

Yes. Your Guitar/Piano choice is saved per song, and per song within a setlist (the setlist setting wins). A song in two setlists can show guitar in one and piano in the other. You can also pick the default instrument in Settings → Chord Diagrams; songs with no preference of their own use that default (guitar out of the box).

Yes (with Pro). Use the − / + control on the performance screen to shift every chord up or down — lyrics never change. The transposition is saved automatically per song, and per song within a setlist, where the setlist value takes priority. So the same song can sit at a different key in different setlists, and a small badge shows each song's transposition in your library and setlists. A locked setlist applies its saved transpositions automatically and disables editing.

Yes. Guitar and piano chord charts are free for all users. Live chord transposition (shift every chord up or down during a set) is a Pro feature.

Yes. Add images or PDF pages to any song — full scores, lyric sheets, or printed chord charts. In Performance mode, swipe through image pages instead of the text lyrics view. Whether a song shows its images or the text lyrics is remembered per song, and per song within a setlist (the setlist setting wins), and importing a PDF score opens to the image view by default.

Attach an audio file to the song, then run stem separation from the song editor, Rehearse, or Performance mode:

• 2 stems — Vocals + Instrumental (quickest way to remove vocals)
• 4 stems — Drums, Bass, Other, Vocals (mute any combination in the mixer)

Switch playback to Stems, mute the Vocals stem, or listen to Instrumental only. Processing uses an on-device AI model — your audio is never uploaded to a server.

Every new install gets 27 days of full stem separation — including remove-vocals workflows — at no cost. After the trial, Pro is required to generate new stems; stems you already created keep playing back for free.

Yes. Mute vocals and keep instrumental stems for practice. You can also balance drums, bass, and other parts independently in the 4-stem layout. Import your own legally obtained audio (Files, iTunes purchases, Bandcamp downloads) — the app does not download from YouTube or Spotify.

Gig Songbook accepts MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, FLAC, OGG, AIFF, CAF, and any other audio format recognised by iOS. Import via Files or iCloud Drive in the song editor, or use Import Audio Files (Pro) for bulk import with metadata detection.

Open any song in the editor and scroll to the Audio section at the bottom. Tap Add from Files. The iOS Files picker opens — navigate to iCloud Drive, On My iPhone, or any connected storage provider and select your file.

The file is copied to the app immediately. The app also reads embedded metadata (title, artist, lyrics) and can auto-fetch timed lyrics via Shazam — no extra steps needed.

Yes — with Pro. Tap ⊙ → Import Audio Files in the Songs tab to select multiple files or an entire folder at once. Each track is detected, tagged, and shown in a review screen before any songs are created. You can edit titles and artists, run Shazam on unrecognised tracks, and confirm in one tap.

When you tap Add from Music Library and choose a protected track, you'll see the message "This track is not available (may be DRM-protected)" — that's Apple's DRM preventing export, not a bug in the app.

If the purchase is DRM-free (any purchase after April 2009): open a song in the editor, scroll to Audio, tap Add from Music Library, and select the track. The app exports it to M4A and attaches it automatically.

Alternatively, find the file in the Files app under On My iPhone → Music and use Add from Files instead.

The track you selected has FairPlay DRM. This is common for older iTunes Store purchases (before 2009) and all Apple Music subscription downloads. iOS blocks any app from exporting these files — there is no workaround.

No — and this is a hard platform limitation, not a missing feature. Spotify streams are encrypted with Widevine DRM and are decrypted in real-time inside Spotify's own process. The audio never exists as a plain file that another app can read. There is no official API to access the audio data.

Spotify's Terms of Service also explicitly prohibit copying or redirecting the audio stream. Any app that attempted this would be removed from the App Store.

Not directly inside the app — Gig Songbook's audio player uses its own attached audio files, not a streaming service. You can run Spotify in the background alongside Gig Songbook for lyrics reference, but the two apps play independently.

No. Downloading audio from YouTube videos violates YouTube's Terms of Service (section 5.H) and the rights of the content owners. Any app that offered this functionality would be rejected by Apple's App Store review and could face legal liability.

Yes, fully. Gig Songbook is offline-first. Your songs, setlists, audio files, and settings are stored locally on your device. You can create, edit, and perform without any internet connection. iCloud sync is entirely optional.

When you are signed into iCloud, the app stores songs and setlists in your private iCloud container — the same iCloud that stores your files in iCloud Drive. Nothing goes through our servers. Changes sync automatically across your devices when connectivity is available.

Each song and setlist carries a last-modified timestamp. When two devices both edit while offline and later reconnect, the most-recently-edited version of each item wins — independently of the others, so no edits are lost.

Sync is built to be version-safe. Your library is saved in a versioned format that newer releases keep reading, so updating one device never strands the others. If a device ever opens a library that was saved by a newer version of the app than it's running, it won't overwrite it — it keeps working locally and shows a small "iCloud sync paused" notice until you update. Once updated, your local changes sync straight back up, so you don't lose data either way.

Your songs and setlists stored in iCloud are not deleted when you remove the app — they remain in your iCloud container. Reinstalling the app will restore everything automatically.

Data stored only on the device (if iCloud was disabled) is deleted with the app. Use Export All Songs (Pro) as a local backup before uninstalling.

Yes. On a slow or busy iCloud connection the app could briefly hang while it waited for iCloud to fetch your library. That work now runs in the background, so the screen stays responsive and your library fills in as it arrives — no more freeze at launch or during a sync. Starting a track also plays without the short hitch some songs had on the very first tap.

Every new install gets 27 days of full stem separation — including remove-vocals and 4-stem mixing — with no purchase required. The window starts on first launch. After it expires, Pro is needed to generate new stems.

Stems you already separated before the trial ends continue to play back without Pro. See also Remove Vocals.

No. The AI model (~54 MB on iPhone, ~75 MB on iPad) runs entirely on your device. Your audio never leaves your phone. The model is downloaded once over Wi-Fi on first use.

Yes — there's a built-in slow-downer. Open the player and you can slow a track down (or speed it up) without changing its pitch, shift the pitch up or down in semitones, and set an A-B loop by dragging the A and B handles on the seek bar to repeat a tricky passage. There's also a master volume slider for the original track.

Tempo and pitch are remembered per song, and per song within a setlist. These practice tools are part of the same 27-day free trial as stem separation, then included with Pro.

Real-time playback (stems play as the song plays, no export step): iPhone 14 Pro and newer, iPad M1 generation and newer.

Offline export (separate the stems first, then play): all supported iPhones and iPads running iOS 17+. On older devices the player bar shows an Export Stems button — tap it once and stems are saved for instant playback from then on.

Note: hardware identifiers are always one generation ahead of the marketing name — the iPhone 16 product uses iPhone17,*, iPhone 17 uses iPhone18,*, and so on. The cutoff is major number ≥ 15, so all current and future iPhones are supported.

No. Pro is a one-time purchase. Pay once, own it forever — no monthly or annual fee. The exact price is shown in the App Store for your region.

Pro unlocks: live chord transposition, stem separation & mixer after the 27-day trial, practice tools (tempo, pitch & A-B loop) after the 27-day trial, Online Song Catalog, bulk audio import with review, improved TXT/PDF/MD import, Import PDF Score, and export songs & setlists as portable JSON backups.

Everything else — unlimited songs, setlists, audio tracks, chord diagrams, lyrics sync, performance mode, iCloud sync — is free.

Yes. Pro is tied to your Apple ID, not a single device. Sign into the App Store with the same Apple ID and tap Restore Purchase in Settings → About → Restore Purchase to activate Pro on any of your devices.

No. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. Your songs and setlists stay on your device and in your private iCloud container — never on our servers.

All requests are user-initiated and send no personal data:

• Fetch Lyrics button — sends song title and artist to api.lyrics.ovh and lrclib.net
• Online Song Catalog — sends a search query to lrclib.net
• Auto Sync via Shazam — records a short audio sample, sends it to Apple Shazam, then fetches timed lyrics from lrclib.net
• Attaching an audio file — if title/artist are missing, may use Shazam to identify the track

Read the Privacy Policy on GitHub →

The quickest way is right inside the app: tap Send Feedback at the top of Settings to send a feature request, bug report, or question without leaving Gig Songbook. You can also email us at gigsongbook@gerov.com or open an issue on GitHub — we read everything.