Some Show Notes suggestions

A couple of suggestions for Show Notes:

I find one of the most useful ways to use Show Notes is to use a small set of note objects to define the structure of the notes, common for all song states (eg. a note showing some kind of heading, then a note with the main performance notes, then a footer maybe). Then have the text of one or more of those notes driven by song state. This means you can define a consistent layout, font, alignment etc, and step through song states changing the text accordingly.

However, one drawback of this is when you want the same show notes to span multiple song states. For some songs I find it easier to have one page of show notes that span multiple sections of a song, so that I can look ahead, don’t lose visual context when changing state etc. Another example is where you play the same repeated chorus a few times, but adding in another layer of instrumentation by changing song state.

Currently, as far as I can see, the two ways to deal with this are:

  1. Copy-paste the text across multiple song states, which then means if you make an edit you need to remember to update the other ones
  2. Use multiple show notes and switch them in and out using hidden state. I find this starts to get a bit cumbersome, where you need to ensure a note is visible for states 4-7, but hidden for 1-3 and 8-14 for example. It can all get a bit fiddly when you have multiple such notes. It’s great that it’s possible this way, but it can be fiddly to get right.

So I’m thinking about some kind of feature analogous to Linked Clone States, but for show notes, where different states can share the same underlying note. Not sure how this would be best presented in the UI though…perhaps a checkbox at the top of the Edit Show Note window, labeled “Same as previous note”, which then greys-out the text or something.

My second suggestion, which is rather easier to explain, and probably easier to achieve - support for Ctrl-A (select all) in Show Notes editor :relaxed:

Third suggestion (added after original post): In the same way as you have variables like $(NextState) that insert the name of the next state into show note text, it would be great if you could insert a variable that gets replaced with the text of the note above, in the same style etc, but for the next song state. That way show notes could comprise of two note objects with text state behaviour, one showing show notes for the current song state, and one showing what’s coming up in the next song state, perhaps in a different colour. It would be so useful live, to be able to look ahead and see what’s coming up - what notes/chords you need to hit after the state change. I know you can achieve this by giving each state a separate note, and hiding all the others. But the management of switching the hiding / colour states of all the notes becomes a bit of a handful. To be able to achieve this elegantly with just two note objects would be super slick.

Neil

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Thanks Neil.

I’ve updated the trello card to reference this topic. Seems there’s a few different things that need to be addressed here - might be a case of taking a step back and reassessing.

Brad

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@Neil_Durant I completely agree with you. Since I do a lot of vocals, I use show notes as a teleprompter for lyrics and chord changes. It would be nice to have a way to see what was upcoming. I also change states while on the same page of lyrics. My pages always change to different colors as I cycle through them, just as a reassurance that I properly executed the state change. I also struggle with the hiding/color of the notes, and have found not to load any color before all states are set and working, for the color you chose for one state will many times jump to another state ( probably just pilot error). I have thought many times about a note within a note, maybe with a different color and font.

Nice idea to switch colour as visual feedback for a successful state change!