Parts of a song
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Hello All, I am not a musician, but trying to write a song/bible projector presentation software for my church. None on the market currently could meet the needs of our international church here in Japan, and PowerPoint could not cut it - never knew the dual monitor presentation with PowerPoint is such a hell :laugh: Now, the problem is, I do not know about songs too well. I have found out that a song lyrics can be made of several parts:
- Verses
- Chorus
- Pre-chorus
- Bridge
- Tag
To the musicians, please can you help me with some questions: 1. Can a song have more than one chorus? 2. If a song can have more than one chorus, and a song have a pre-chorus, is it a must that a pre-chorus exist for each chorus of the song? 2. What is the "Tag" of a song? (it was difficult finding the meaning over the internet). 3. Can a song have more than one "Tag"? 4. Can a song have more than one "Bridge"? Any other tip is welcomed. BTW, I wish to make this a general library written in C#/.NET so that others with similar needs can use it to write their own presentation software by customizing/extending it - may be useful only to churches. The sources will be posted here as public domain library and applications. Anyone trying to do a similar work can also contact me for exchange of ideas or collaboration. In fact, if you have a similar need but do not have the time to code, you can still help with testing, design, documentations, translations or suggestions. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
A song can have any structure you like. Typically it's verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle 8/solo/verse/chorus, but the variations are endless. Bon Jovi are one band I can think of that ALWAYS have a pre-chorus, if you want to hear how that goes. Plenty of bands have songs that have no structure close to that though ( for example, Motorhead - Orgasmatron has only one structure right through the song ). Why do you need to differentiate beyond the fact that a song is a bunch of text ? That's all the software we use at church does. A song is one or more pages of text, that's all. Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer
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Hello All, I am not a musician, but trying to write a song/bible projector presentation software for my church. None on the market currently could meet the needs of our international church here in Japan, and PowerPoint could not cut it - never knew the dual monitor presentation with PowerPoint is such a hell :laugh: Now, the problem is, I do not know about songs too well. I have found out that a song lyrics can be made of several parts:
- Verses
- Chorus
- Pre-chorus
- Bridge
- Tag
To the musicians, please can you help me with some questions: 1. Can a song have more than one chorus? 2. If a song can have more than one chorus, and a song have a pre-chorus, is it a must that a pre-chorus exist for each chorus of the song? 2. What is the "Tag" of a song? (it was difficult finding the meaning over the internet). 3. Can a song have more than one "Tag"? 4. Can a song have more than one "Bridge"? Any other tip is welcomed. BTW, I wish to make this a general library written in C#/.NET so that others with similar needs can use it to write their own presentation software by customizing/extending it - may be useful only to churches. The sources will be posted here as public domain library and applications. Anyone trying to do a similar work can also contact me for exchange of ideas or collaboration. In fact, if you have a similar need but do not have the time to code, you can still help with testing, design, documentations, translations or suggestions. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
I've been working on a program to do exactly that for the last 5 or so years. We've used it at my church for about 3 years, and it takes as little as 20 seconds to set up all the songs for a church service, compared to a few hours in PowerPoint. What I did for verses/choruses etc. is to set up a user-defined tag for each "part" of the song, and they can then use the tags to represent the order of the song. For example, say a song has parts called "v", "ch" and "br", and they enter the song order as "v ch v ch ch br", then the software will interpret the parts in the order to determine which parts to display on the screen and in which order. This way, there is no restriction on the names or orders of the parts - its fully customisable by the user.
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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Hello All, I am not a musician, but trying to write a song/bible projector presentation software for my church. None on the market currently could meet the needs of our international church here in Japan, and PowerPoint could not cut it - never knew the dual monitor presentation with PowerPoint is such a hell :laugh: Now, the problem is, I do not know about songs too well. I have found out that a song lyrics can be made of several parts:
- Verses
- Chorus
- Pre-chorus
- Bridge
- Tag
To the musicians, please can you help me with some questions: 1. Can a song have more than one chorus? 2. If a song can have more than one chorus, and a song have a pre-chorus, is it a must that a pre-chorus exist for each chorus of the song? 2. What is the "Tag" of a song? (it was difficult finding the meaning over the internet). 3. Can a song have more than one "Tag"? 4. Can a song have more than one "Bridge"? Any other tip is welcomed. BTW, I wish to make this a general library written in C#/.NET so that others with similar needs can use it to write their own presentation software by customizing/extending it - may be useful only to churches. The sources will be posted here as public domain library and applications. Anyone trying to do a similar work can also contact me for exchange of ideas or collaboration. In fact, if you have a similar need but do not have the time to code, you can still help with testing, design, documentations, translations or suggestions. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
My church use to have the same problems. My youth minister made pretty neat powerpoint slides. Hes tried that MediaShout, EasyWorship, and SundayPlus. I think hes using MediaShout and thats working out pretty well. He still imports the slides for ads about other events into it. Powerpoint and dural monitors isn't that bad of a problem, its just a matter of having it setup in Windows, and in powerpoint (Setup Show -> Second monitor [the resolution should be 800x600]) -Steven Hicks
CPA
CodeProjectAddict
Actual Linux Penguins were harmed in the creation of this message.
More tutorials: Ltpb.8m.com: Tutorials |404Browser.com (Download Link)
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I've been working on a program to do exactly that for the last 5 or so years. We've used it at my church for about 3 years, and it takes as little as 20 seconds to set up all the songs for a church service, compared to a few hours in PowerPoint. What I did for verses/choruses etc. is to set up a user-defined tag for each "part" of the song, and they can then use the tags to represent the order of the song. For example, say a song has parts called "v", "ch" and "br", and they enter the song order as "v ch v ch ch br", then the software will interpret the parts in the order to determine which parts to display on the screen and in which order. This way, there is no restriction on the names or orders of the parts - its fully customisable by the user.
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Thanks for the input. Ryan Binns wrote: What I did for verses/choruses etc. is to set up a user-defined tag for each "part" of the song, and they can then use the tags to represent the order of the song. Initially after seen this with OpenSong, I was trying to do something similar but found that the OpenSong format is easily messed up, and to parse it one has to scan/read all characters from the first to the end character in the lyrics. So, I have decided to let the users define the parts visually, avoid the "v" ([V] in OpenSong). Unfortunately, I have to train the users since most members do not use computer regularly - better still those who will actually have the time to enter the songs and control the presentations. So, my problem is how to present these options to the users without confusing them - it must be simple. Some of our problems are: 1. Being an international church, we have a song in different languages, English, Variations of Africans, Japanese, Tagalog etc. 2. For the Japanese songs, most members do not read Japanese so we need both Kanji, Hiragana and Romaji (Roman Alphabets) on the same slide. 3. We need to present the song chord to all, since we do not have dedicated musicians to play the instruments. Anyone available and can play an instrument takes it up! (OpenSong does not currently present the chord, only the lyrics on the slides). 4. etc So, unless these are well managed by the program, the users will be at lost. Now, back to the questions. Can you use your experience here to answer some of the questions I posted? My church is an international church here in Japan, attended by mostly foreigners with some Japanese, so there is hardly a permanent member. I may soon leave Japan :) Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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My church use to have the same problems. My youth minister made pretty neat powerpoint slides. Hes tried that MediaShout, EasyWorship, and SundayPlus. I think hes using MediaShout and thats working out pretty well. He still imports the slides for ads about other events into it. Powerpoint and dural monitors isn't that bad of a problem, its just a matter of having it setup in Windows, and in powerpoint (Setup Show -> Second monitor [the resolution should be 800x600]) -Steven Hicks
CPA
CodeProjectAddict
Actual Linux Penguins were harmed in the creation of this message.
More tutorials: Ltpb.8m.com: Tutorials |404Browser.com (Download Link)
(Steven Hicks)n+1 wrote: ...MediaShout, EasyWorship, and SundayPlus... With the exception of the SundayPlus, I have tried these programs and none could meet our needs. Presenting the song chords, for instance was not easily possible in any of these. Having a multiple languages of a song was out of the question, so I have finally decided to program it. (Steven Hicks)n+1 wrote: Powerpoint and dural monitors isn't that bad of a problem, its just a matter of having it setup in Windows, and in powerpoint (Setup Show -> Second monitor [the resolution should be 800x600]) The problem is not on the resolutions but the level of control. With a little automation, you can do better with than the default. You can even get a real time presentation with the dual monitor using PowerPoint. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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A song can have any structure you like. Typically it's verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle 8/solo/verse/chorus, but the variations are endless. Bon Jovi are one band I can think of that ALWAYS have a pre-chorus, if you want to hear how that goes. Plenty of bands have songs that have no structure close to that though ( for example, Motorhead - Orgasmatron has only one structure right through the song ). Why do you need to differentiate beyond the fact that a song is a bunch of text ? That's all the software we use at church does. A song is one or more pages of text, that's all. Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer
Christian Graus wrote: verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle 8/solo/verse/chorus Now, you have introduced more :(( What is the middle 8 too? Christian Graus wrote: Why do you need to differentiate beyond the fact that a song is a bunch of text ? That's all the software we use at church does. A song is one or more pages of text, that's all. At least we need to present the chord as well on the slides but may not need to print to when individual users need a copy. BTW, which software do you use at church? Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Hello All, I am not a musician, but trying to write a song/bible projector presentation software for my church. None on the market currently could meet the needs of our international church here in Japan, and PowerPoint could not cut it - never knew the dual monitor presentation with PowerPoint is such a hell :laugh: Now, the problem is, I do not know about songs too well. I have found out that a song lyrics can be made of several parts:
- Verses
- Chorus
- Pre-chorus
- Bridge
- Tag
To the musicians, please can you help me with some questions: 1. Can a song have more than one chorus? 2. If a song can have more than one chorus, and a song have a pre-chorus, is it a must that a pre-chorus exist for each chorus of the song? 2. What is the "Tag" of a song? (it was difficult finding the meaning over the internet). 3. Can a song have more than one "Tag"? 4. Can a song have more than one "Bridge"? Any other tip is welcomed. BTW, I wish to make this a general library written in C#/.NET so that others with similar needs can use it to write their own presentation software by customizing/extending it - may be useful only to churches. The sources will be posted here as public domain library and applications. Anyone trying to do a similar work can also contact me for exchange of ideas or collaboration. In fact, if you have a similar need but do not have the time to code, you can still help with testing, design, documentations, translations or suggestions. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
Hi, I recently saw this while looking for some Managed DirectX tutorials, I think this does what you want to do. Just wanted to let you know. Dream beam[^] Arjan
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Hi, I recently saw this while looking for some Managed DirectX tutorials, I think this does what you want to do. Just wanted to let you know. Dream beam[^] Arjan
Thanks so much. I will investigate it tonight. It seems to be moving exactly in my direction. It seems God wants me to relax and enjoy VS.NET 2005 Beta 2 :) Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Christian Graus wrote: verse/chorus/verse/chorus/middle 8/solo/verse/chorus Now, you have introduced more :(( What is the middle 8 too? Christian Graus wrote: Why do you need to differentiate beyond the fact that a song is a bunch of text ? That's all the software we use at church does. A song is one or more pages of text, that's all. At least we need to present the chord as well on the slides but may not need to print to when individual users need a copy. BTW, which software do you use at church? Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
The middle 8 is the bridge. The chord is also just text, easy to add, if you want to show everyone that info. Why don't your musicians have music books ? The chords a guitarist can generally work out, and they don't help a pianist much. We use Powerpoint, heavily scripted. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
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Hello All, I am not a musician, but trying to write a song/bible projector presentation software for my church. None on the market currently could meet the needs of our international church here in Japan, and PowerPoint could not cut it - never knew the dual monitor presentation with PowerPoint is such a hell :laugh: Now, the problem is, I do not know about songs too well. I have found out that a song lyrics can be made of several parts:
- Verses
- Chorus
- Pre-chorus
- Bridge
- Tag
To the musicians, please can you help me with some questions: 1. Can a song have more than one chorus? 2. If a song can have more than one chorus, and a song have a pre-chorus, is it a must that a pre-chorus exist for each chorus of the song? 2. What is the "Tag" of a song? (it was difficult finding the meaning over the internet). 3. Can a song have more than one "Tag"? 4. Can a song have more than one "Bridge"? Any other tip is welcomed. BTW, I wish to make this a general library written in C#/.NET so that others with similar needs can use it to write their own presentation software by customizing/extending it - may be useful only to churches. The sources will be posted here as public domain library and applications. Anyone trying to do a similar work can also contact me for exchange of ideas or collaboration. In fact, if you have a similar need but do not have the time to code, you can still help with testing, design, documentations, translations or suggestions. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
We use SundayPlus, however we just display the song lyrics. We don't include the musical notes, which is what I assume you are trying to do. I think most people in the congregation can't read music anyway...I know I can't. :) Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. - Jim Elliot Me blog, You read
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We use SundayPlus, however we just display the song lyrics. We don't include the musical notes, which is what I assume you are trying to do. I think most people in the congregation can't read music anyway...I know I can't. :) Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. - Jim Elliot Me blog, You read
Thanks for the reply. Gary Kirkham wrote: I think most people in the congregation can't read music anyway...I know I can't. Neither do I :) Actually, the chords are not for the general congregation, only the instrumentalist. We do not have a worship center of our own, we share the place with others - there are 8 sections in the same building on Sunday; Japanese, English/Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish etc. So, we do not have dedicated instrumentalists who practice the songs. So, by projecting the chords, any instrumentalist around picks an instrument to support the worship. Gary Kirkham wrote: Me blog, You read BTW, I have just read part of your blog - keep it up. Coincidently, a "slogan" in our church is "God is Good", with the response "All the Time", and the reverse. God bless you. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Thanks for the reply. Gary Kirkham wrote: I think most people in the congregation can't read music anyway...I know I can't. Neither do I :) Actually, the chords are not for the general congregation, only the instrumentalist. We do not have a worship center of our own, we share the place with others - there are 8 sections in the same building on Sunday; Japanese, English/Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish etc. So, we do not have dedicated instrumentalists who practice the songs. So, by projecting the chords, any instrumentalist around picks an instrument to support the worship. Gary Kirkham wrote: Me blog, You read BTW, I have just read part of your blog - keep it up. Coincidently, a "slogan" in our church is "God is Good", with the response "All the Time", and the reverse. God bless you. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
Every now and then my pastor will ask me, "Gary, is God good?" And I always reply, "All the time!" Paul Selormey wrote: Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody. Along that line. Some time ago, I heard what I think is the best description of what it means to live the Christian life: "Allowing Jesus to express His love for others through you." Gary Kirkham Forever Forgiven and Alive in the Spirit He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. - Jim Elliot Me blog, You read
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The middle 8 is the bridge. The chord is also just text, easy to add, if you want to show everyone that info. Why don't your musicians have music books ? The chords a guitarist can generally work out, and they don't help a pianist much. We use Powerpoint, heavily scripted. Christian Graus - Microsoft MVP - C++
Wow, you guys have high tech churches, that's for sure. Here in England it's usually a simple song book for us :-). -- Andrew.
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Thanks for the input. Ryan Binns wrote: What I did for verses/choruses etc. is to set up a user-defined tag for each "part" of the song, and they can then use the tags to represent the order of the song. Initially after seen this with OpenSong, I was trying to do something similar but found that the OpenSong format is easily messed up, and to parse it one has to scan/read all characters from the first to the end character in the lyrics. So, I have decided to let the users define the parts visually, avoid the "v" ([V] in OpenSong). Unfortunately, I have to train the users since most members do not use computer regularly - better still those who will actually have the time to enter the songs and control the presentations. So, my problem is how to present these options to the users without confusing them - it must be simple. Some of our problems are: 1. Being an international church, we have a song in different languages, English, Variations of Africans, Japanese, Tagalog etc. 2. For the Japanese songs, most members do not read Japanese so we need both Kanji, Hiragana and Romaji (Roman Alphabets) on the same slide. 3. We need to present the song chord to all, since we do not have dedicated musicians to play the instruments. Anyone available and can play an instrument takes it up! (OpenSong does not currently present the chord, only the lyrics on the slides). 4. etc So, unless these are well managed by the program, the users will be at lost. Now, back to the questions. Can you use your experience here to answer some of the questions I posted? My church is an international church here in Japan, attended by mostly foreigners with some Japanese, so there is hardly a permanent member. I may soon leave Japan :) Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
1. Can a song have more than one chorus? Yes. If there is only one chorus, but it's sung slightly differently in one part (eg, the last line is left off for some reason), then you'd need to enter it as two choruses. 2. If a song can have more than one chorus, and a song have a pre-chorus, is it a must that a pre-chorus exist for each chorus of the song? No. 2. What is the "Tag" of a song? (it was difficult finding the meaning over the internet). A tag is basically the same as a bridge. It's generally one line repeated a few times, but doesn't have to be. 3. Can a song have more than one "Tag"? Yes. 4. Can a song have more than one "Bridge"? Yes. Basically, there are no restrictions on the layout of the song - the author can do whatever he/she likes. This is why all song presentation programs (well, all the ones I have used anyway) don't impose any restrictions either.
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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1. Can a song have more than one chorus? Yes. If there is only one chorus, but it's sung slightly differently in one part (eg, the last line is left off for some reason), then you'd need to enter it as two choruses. 2. If a song can have more than one chorus, and a song have a pre-chorus, is it a must that a pre-chorus exist for each chorus of the song? No. 2. What is the "Tag" of a song? (it was difficult finding the meaning over the internet). A tag is basically the same as a bridge. It's generally one line repeated a few times, but doesn't have to be. 3. Can a song have more than one "Tag"? Yes. 4. Can a song have more than one "Bridge"? Yes. Basically, there are no restrictions on the layout of the song - the author can do whatever he/she likes. This is why all song presentation programs (well, all the ones I have used anyway) don't impose any restrictions either.
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Thanks for the information. I think this is what I need. Ryan Binns wrote: Basically, there are no restrictions on the layout of the song - the author can do whatever he/she likes. This is why all song presentation programs (well, all the ones I have used anyway) don't impose any restrictions either. The aim is to basically eliminate restrictions but to keep it simple by not throwing in what does not exist in nature. Since, I am not a musician, I do not know what exist and what does not, so this information is very valuable - thanks. Sorry, I forgot to ask this. Is there any special name for a song in which the leader sings part (Solo) and all others sing the rest? (or what is the name of the parts sang by all others?) Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Wow, you guys have high tech churches, that's for sure. Here in England it's usually a simple song book for us :-). -- Andrew.
Andrew Peace wrote: Here in England it's usually a simple song book for us Say in your church, there are many free song presentation software written by programmers in England. I know of two. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Thanks for the information. I think this is what I need. Ryan Binns wrote: Basically, there are no restrictions on the layout of the song - the author can do whatever he/she likes. This is why all song presentation programs (well, all the ones I have used anyway) don't impose any restrictions either. The aim is to basically eliminate restrictions but to keep it simple by not throwing in what does not exist in nature. Since, I am not a musician, I do not know what exist and what does not, so this information is very valuable - thanks. Sorry, I forgot to ask this. Is there any special name for a song in which the leader sings part (Solo) and all others sing the rest? (or what is the name of the parts sang by all others?) Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
Paul Selormey wrote: The aim is to basically eliminate restrictions but to keep it simple by not throwing in what does not exist in nature. Just as an example, I store each song as a text file, with the following basic format:
[title]The song title
[copyright]\cpr 2004 Joe Bloggs / Bloggs Music Inc.
[order]v1 v2 ch[Verse 1]
This is the text
For the first verse[Verse 2]
This is the text
For the second verse[Chorus]
This is the text
For the chorusetc... I find that it's easy enough for people to edit even if they don't know a lot about computers. The program automatically generates the short names for each part from the long names. Paul Selormey wrote: Is there any special name for a song in which the leader sings part (Solo) and all others sing the rest? (or what is the name of the parts sang by all others?) I've never come across one. There may be a special name, but it doesn't really matter. It's still a song, right? ;)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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Paul Selormey wrote: The aim is to basically eliminate restrictions but to keep it simple by not throwing in what does not exist in nature. Just as an example, I store each song as a text file, with the following basic format:
[title]The song title
[copyright]\cpr 2004 Joe Bloggs / Bloggs Music Inc.
[order]v1 v2 ch[Verse 1]
This is the text
For the first verse[Verse 2]
This is the text
For the second verse[Chorus]
This is the text
For the chorusetc... I find that it's easy enough for people to edit even if they don't know a lot about computers. The program automatically generates the short names for each part from the long names. Paul Selormey wrote: Is there any special name for a song in which the leader sings part (Solo) and all others sing the rest? (or what is the name of the parts sang by all others?) I've never come across one. There may be a special name, but it doesn't really matter. It's still a song, right? ;)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Thanks for all the support. God Bless you. Best regards, Paul. Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.