MWS and lyrics

[dragoodan]

Hi!

I need to record a new song, and in order to aid the singer do a sing-along, I normally use the lyrics view in my DAW (Sonar), but I prefer recording in SS all the way. The only problem is that I don't know how to show the lyrics to the singer, and the timing of these, such as a karaoke would, any suggestions?

[Cary B. Cornett]

My personal approach is the old way, to print a lyric sheet that can be put on a regular music stand. If I had proper notation software, I would consider printing up a lead sheet for the singer.

I have to admit, though, that I would like to have a "lyric view" in MWS that works in a fashion similar to my old Cakewalk sequencing software.

[dragoodan]

I agree, because you can have both the lyrics and the timing accurately that way.

[MikeDee]

I know a vocalist who uses a laptop to view the lyrics in large font; he hits the spacebar to scroll the lyrics to view a portion at a time. Unfortunately, I don't know which app he uses, nor do I know whether he pre-formatted the lyrics with various amounts of white space to display properly what he needs on the screen as he scrolls.

If you don't have a spare machine, then here's a crazy idea: Shoot a video of the lyrics in large font, from top to bottom, as the song is playing. Then fly that video into SAWStudio's video viewer, and time-align the song (i.e., the audio regions) to the video (or vice versa, though the video will snap to a frame...should still be close enough). Then enlarge the Video Viewer. You can move the Viewer to a second monitor, if available.

Hey, whatever works, right?

[dragoodan]

Hah!

I would never have thought of that!

It does sound like a workaround, only limitation would be if I need to add some last minute changes to the lyrics, since it would be an already rendered, non-editable video


I will do this, but it would still be great if a lyrics view were implemented in the MWS someday...

[MikeDee]

***8729; ***8729; ***8729; ***8729; ***8729;

It does sound like a workaround, only limitation would be if I need to add some last minute changes to the lyrics, since it would be an already rendered, non-editable video

***8729; ***8729; ***8729; ***8729; ***8729;

True, you can't cross out or use Liquid Paper on the screen.

Unless...hey, you can get one of those giant SmartBoards! Now you can edit all you want...and you probably won't have to scroll, either.

Wha-what's that? Oh, yea, cost...oh, well, back to Idea #1, then...the laptop (or NetBook) will be much cheaper.

Blasted tradeoffs!

[905shmick]

This sounds like something that could easily be done in powerpoint and you would still be able to modify things at the last minute.

[MikeDee]

Absolutely. Perhaps that's what my friend uses (in lieu of a word processor or text editor).

Again, whatever works. Reminds me of another vocalist, who, having a wi-fi connection on her laptop, was able to sing a request on the spot by viewing the lyrics on some web site. Oh, and our band's bass player, who quickly viewed a chord chart on his iPhone during a recent gig.

I know these two couldn't be edited...but having a lyric sheet or chord chart on demand is pretty cóòl in and of itself.

[Bob L]

If you do it with the video viewer... just type the text page by page in a paint program and render each page as bmp or jpg file... then place those images on the video track and stretch each one the proper length... the viewer will play those back like a video in perfect time... and you can easily change any one page and swap that image ontop the timeline if needed.

Bob L

[MikeDee]

If you do it with the video viewer... just type the text page by page in a paint program and render each page as bmp or jpg file... then place those images on the video track and stretch each one the proper length... the viewer will play those back like a video in perfect time... and you can easily change any one page and swap that image ontop the timeline if needed.

Bob L

And there's our "PowerPoint" slide show.

I completely forgot that .bmp or .jpg files can be added to the Video Track...and I just learned something that I apparently missed in the manual, that the images can be stretched on the timeline. Heh, and all along I was going outside of SS to build a slide show after the fact.

Bob, you've done it again...again!