Feature request - set song key per show

[Sander]

Hi,

I frequently have to play the same songs with the same band but different vocalists who like to do their songs in various keys. While it is possible to make notes of this, that isn't very practical on the set list I share with my bandmates. I would like the option to alter the song key in a specific show. Or perhaps to have various song keys and label them with the different performers we have.

Ideally, I would have a default "performer" per song and be able to alter that per show and auto update the key and perhaps my sheet.

Other than creating three or four versions of every song, what would be the most effective way to deal with this.

[arlo]

This is on my wish list and I'll add a vote for you. Meanwhile, you can put whatever text you want to into the Key field. I sometimes put "A (D)" to show the actual key plus the harmonica key for the harmonica player. Similarly, you could use abbreviations like "A (S=Bb, J=C)" to show that a song is normally in A, but Susie sings it in Bb and Julie sings it in C.

Another option is to create custom fields like "Susie key" and "Julie key" and populate those with "Bb" and "C" and then when you print or email a set list, you can hide the Key field and show the appropriate custom field instead. That's assuming you have one of those vocalist for the whole show, rather than different vocalists on different songs.

[Sander]

Yeah unfortunately we have either two girls singing or two girls and a guy, and the guy then does some of the same songs but in a different key and so on. So even with custom fields I don't see a clean way this would work. In addition, we sometimes have a different guy who then has his own keys and so on. I could really use a good way to organize this stuff. Glad to hear you already thought of it too.

[arlo]

Well, you can use some kind of notation to put it all into the Key field as I suggested. The nice thing about this is that everything would be entered in one place and you wouldn't have to go through and switch the keys or select the singers before each show as you would have to do in the setup you're looking for.

[Sander]

That's true but with up to five different singers it would get kinda messy. And when we have a stand in guitar player for instance I'd like to provide a list with the correct keys before the gig so he can prepare, rather than a list with four keys and some initials he doesn't know. I'll think more on it, hope you come up with a nice solution in the future!

[arlo]

In the new app version released today, you can make a "smart copy" of a song. This inherits all the entries from the original song unless you override them. So you could make a smart copy of a song and change the key or other info and use that smart copy in a show, then either keep the smart copy for future use or delete it after the show (and the original song with automatically replace the smart copy in the show). More info about the new version is here:

http://forum.arlomedia.com/index.php/topic,1786.0.html