Fiddle User Guide

User Guide

Fiddle is a chord songbook for musicians and bands: a song library, transposition, capo, chord diagrams, a metronome, a tuner, setlists, and a live session for keeping a band in sync on stage. Everything runs on your phone — there is no account, no internet feature, and nothing you do here is ever sent anywhere except to your own band members' phones on the same Wi-Fi network, and only while a live session is open.

Getting started

The first time you open Fiddle, a short tutorial walks you through the basics: your songs, chords at a touch, playlists and Perform mode, and Band live. Use Next and Back to move between steps, or tap Skip at any time.

The welcome step of Fiddle's first-run tutorial
The tutorial opens automatically the first time you start Fiddle.

You can watch it again later from Settings → Show the tutorial again.

Fiddle has five tabs along the bottom: Songs, Playlists, Import & export, Metronome and Tuner.

Your song library

The Songs tab is your library: every song you have added, sorted and searchable.

The song library, showing a search field, sort chips and a list of songs
The library tab: search, sort and filter your songs.

Tap the trash-bin icon at the top to see songs you have deleted, or the gear icon to open settings. Tap the + button to add a new song.

Adding songs

There are two ways to get a song into Fiddle: type or paste it in yourself, or import it from files you already have.

Typing a song

Tap + on the library tab to open the New song screen. Fill in the title and artist, then write the song body with the chords on the line directly above the lyrics they belong to, lined up with spaces:

       G                D
Morning light, a gentle sound
       G                     Em
That leads a wanderer back home

Fiddle reads a line as chords when it is made up mostly of chord names and spacing; everything else is read as lyrics. You can paste in a whole song at once, or type it line by line.

The new-song screen with title, artist and a chords-above-lyrics text editor
Writing a song by hand: chords go on their own line, above the words.

If you already have the song as a plain text or ChordPro file, tap From file to load its contents straight into the editor instead of typing it out — this only works up to about 200 KB of text; for a bigger file, use Import & export instead.

Importing from files

On the Import & export tab, tap Choose files to choose one or more files from your phone. You can pick several at once — a whole songbook in a single Word file works too, and Fiddle splits it into separate songs automatically where it can tell where one song ends and the next begins.

Fiddle reads:

What Fiddle cannot read, and why:

After picking files, a list on the same screen shows each file's progress and how many songs it produced. Tap the × next to a file to drop it from the import before continuing.

A Word or plain text file that is really a bare list of song titles — one per line, no lyrics — is split differently: Fiddle tries to recognize a song list on its own, but for a borderline file you can flip the Song list switch next to it yourself to force that reading, or turn it off to split the file as one or more full songs instead.

Reviewing before you save

Once your files are processed, tap the button at the bottom to continue to Review before saving. Here you see every song Fiddle found, ready to check over:

The review screen listing several imported songs with checkboxes and warnings
Review each imported song before it is saved to your library.

When you are happy with the selection, continue to the destination screen.

Choosing a destination

The destination screen with band and playlist choices
Choose which band and playlist the imported songs belong to, if any.

Here you decide, once, for the whole batch: which Band the songs belong to (or none), and which Playlist to add them to (or none) — an existing, unlocked one, or a brand new one, optionally with a performance date. A playlist locked for a show is not offered here. Tap Save to finish.

Viewing a song

Tap any song in the library to open it. This is where you play from.

A song open with chords above the lyrics and header controls
The song screen: chords above the lyrics, with key, capo and text-size controls.

Transposing and the capo

At the top of the song, the Key stepper changes the song's key one semitone at a time, and the Capo stepper sets which fret your capo is on. Long-press either one to reset it. The Text stepper changes the text size.

Close-up of the key and capo steppers at the top of a song
Key, capo and text size, each with a −/+ stepper.

When you change the key, Fiddle can suggest a capo fret that lets you play the same shapes you already know — look for the tip line under the header. Tapping it applies the suggested capo automatically.

Your role

A chip in the header cycles through your role in the band: Guitar, Vocals, Bass, Drums or Keys. Guitar sees the song exactly as written. Vocals, bass and drums automatically get their own view with no changes needed: vocals and drums drop the chord lines and show just the lyrics and structure (drums keep section names and repeat marks like "x2", since a drummer still needs to know when to change), and bass shows the bass note of each chord instead of the full chord. Keys sees the same chords as guitar, but with a keyboard in the chord card below instead of a fretboard. The capo stepper only appears for the guitar role — bass and keys are written as the notes that actually sound, capo and all, so it has no use there, and vocals and drums have no chords to apply it to. This is a single setting for the whole app, not per song: My role in settings is the very same choice as the chip, so changing it either place changes what every song shows until you change it again.

If the automatic view isn't quite right for a song, a second chip next to it opens an editor — the same one used for typing a song — to write your own version of the song's text for that role. Once you have one, a button on that screen deletes it again, falling back to a version you received from someone else for that role, if there is one, or to the automatic view otherwise. Guitar has no separate version, since guitar is the song itself.

The chord card

Tap any chord in the text to see how to play it: a small card pops up right where you tapped, with a diagram, a play icon so you can hear it, and More. Tap More to expand it into a full sheet, where a labelled Play button plays it, the chord's notes are listed under Notes:, and, if more than one way to play it is known, Previous voicing / Next voicing arrows with a counter let you flip through them. If the capo is on, the full sheet also shows what the chord actually sounds like once the capo is accounted for. With the keys role, the card shows a small keyboard instead, with the chord's keys and, for a slash chord, the left-hand bass note picked out in a second color. With the bass role, the card shows a single note on a bass neck instead — the bass note of the chord you tapped, the lowest-sounding position first — and More lets you step through the other places where the same note can be played. The neck has four strings, or five if Bass 5 is the preset chosen in the tuner. Vocals and drums have no chord card, since their view has no chord symbols to tap.

The chord card showing a diagram, notes and a play button
Tap a chord for its diagram, alternate voicings, and a Play button.
The chord card for the keys role, showing a small keyboard diagram
With the keys role, chords are shown on a keyboard instead.

Fixing a line

Fiddle guesses whether each line is lyrics, chords, tablature or a section heading. If it guesses wrong — for example on an unusual layout — long-press that line and choose This line is…: Lyrics, Chords, Tablature or Section heading. The correction is saved with the song — but editing the song's text later resets these corrections, since they are tied to specific lines. This only works on guitar's own text: while you're viewing your own or a received version for another role (see "Your role" above), long-press on a line does nothing, since that version is edited as plain text instead.

The long-press menu for correcting whether a line is lyrics, chords, tab or a heading
Long-press a line to correct how it is read.

If a song contains a B chord, a chip lets you switch how it is read: B = B♭ (German) or B = B (English).

A long line of lyrics, chords or tablature wraps to fit your screen instead of running off the side — Fiddle never scrolls a song sideways. Tablature wraps as a whole block, so a continuation still lines up under the right string names. Tab written for a drum kit (hi-hat, snare, kick and so on) is shown the same way, but tapping it does nothing, since there's no fretboard to show for a drum hit.

Tempo, tap tempo and the inline metronome

Tap the tempo chip — it shows Tap tempo if the song has no saved tempo yet, or the current beats-per-minute if it does — to open a compact metronome bar right on the song screen. Tap along with the music (Tap) to set the tempo by tapping; Fiddle remembers it with the song. Tap the round play/stop button to hear the click without leaving the song; −1/+1 nudge the tempo by one beat per minute, Full metronome opens the full metronome tab, and once a tempo is set, Clear tempo removes it again.

Auto-scroll

The Scroll chip cycles through a few scroll speeds so the text moves on its own while you play, hands free. It stops by itself once it reaches the end of the song; touching the screen to scroll by hand pauses it, and it picks back up once the screen settles — right after you lift your finger, or after a flick finishes scrolling on its own.

A song with auto-scroll running, shown mid-scroll
Auto-scroll moves the text for you at a chosen speed.

Favorites and sharing

Tap the star icon in the header to favorite or unfavorite a song. Tap the share icon to send it out as Lyrics with chords, a ChordPro file, or a PDF — in the key and capo you currently see on screen. (Exporting the same song from the Import & export tab instead uses its saved key and capo, not whatever you last had it transposed to.) The same menu has a Report content button, for reporting copyrighted content or a problem with the app.

Landscape and the playlist panel

Turn your phone sideways, or use a tablet, and — as long as you have at least one playlist — a side panel appears next to the text showing a setlist (the one you opened the song from, or the last one you used), so you can jump to the next song without leaving the chord sheet. The list icon in the header hides or shows it; Song display → Playlist panel on wide screens turns it off for good.

A song open in landscape orientation with the playlist panel open beside it
In landscape, wide screens show the setlist alongside the song.

Editing and deleting songs

Tap the pencil icon on a song to open Edit song, the same screen used for typing a new song. Change the title, artist, tempo, time signature or the body text, then save.

To delete a song, open it for editing and tap Delete song. Deleted songs are not gone right away — they move to the Trash, reachable from the trash-bin icon on the library tab.

The trash screen listing deleted songs with a restore button on each
Deleted songs wait in the trash until you restore or permanently lose them.

From the trash you can tap Restore to bring a song back. A song stays in the trash — and in any library backup you save while it's there — until you delete your library or all your data under Settings → Danger zone, uninstall Fiddle, or clear its storage in your phone's settings; any of these erases it permanently.

Editing the version for a role

When you edit a song that is already in your library, a row of chips under Version being edited chooses what you are editing: Song is the song itself, and Vocals, Bass, Drums and Keys are the versions of its text for those roles. It is the same editor that the chip next to the role chip on the song screen opens, so you can go through every version in one visit. A role that has no version of its own yet starts from the version you received for it, if there is one, or from its automatic view. Title, artist, tempo and time signature belong to the song, so those fields appear only under Song.

If you tap another chip while you have unsaved changes, Fiddle asks first: Save keeps them, Discard drops them, and Cancel leaves you where you were. A song you are typing in for the first time gets these chips once it has been saved.

Drum rhythms on a step grid

While you edit the Drums version, a Rhythm chip above the text opens a step grid: you tap a drum rhythm in, and Fiddle writes it into the text as drum tab for you. A new grid starts with one empty bar and three rows — Hi-hat, Snare and Bass drum — in the song's time signature.

Tap Play to hear the rhythm in a loop, and Stop to end it. Preview tempo starts at the song's tempo, or at 100 if the song has none, and is for listening only: changing it never changes the song. While the loop plays, the grid follows it from bar to bar until you pick a bar or change a field; from then on it stays on that bar, so you can edit while you listen, and it follows the loop again the next time you tap Play. A very long rhythm — long bars at a slow tempo — plays only its first bars, and a note under the tempo tells you how many; the whole rhythm is still written to the song.

Tap Insert to write the rhythm into the text, just above the line the cursor was on — or at the very top of the text if you had not tapped into the text yet; like anything else you type there, it is saved when you save the version. To change a rhythm later, put the cursor anywhere in it and tap Rhythm again: the grid opens with that rhythm, and the button now reads Replace. If the grid cannot read the rhythm at the cursor — tab written by hand that is longer than four bars, for example — it leaves that rhythm untouched, starts empty, and puts the new one in below it. Cancel closes the grid without touching the text; if you changed anything in the grid, it asks before discarding it.

On the song screen, a single drum line that ends with a bar line — which is what a one-row rhythm from the grid looks like — is shown as tab. A Drums version saved before Fiddle could do that may still show such a line as plain text; Settings → Re-parse songs refreshes it.

Playlists and Perform mode

A playlist is a setlist: an ordered list of songs for a rehearsal, a gig or an event. Open the Playlists tab to see all of yours.

The playlists tab listing several setlists
The playlists tab: every setlist you've made.

Tap the + button, give the setlist a name in the New playlist dialog and tap Create, then + Add songs to add songs from your library.

An open playlist with songs listed in order and reorder arrows
Inside a playlist: reorder songs, or tap one to open it.

Inside a playlist you can:

Tap ▶ Perform to start Perform mode: a full-screen view built for the stage, with large text, its own auto-scroll and text-size controls, and previous/next arrow buttons to move through the setlist. A song opened from a locked playlist keeps that playlist's frozen key, capo and tempo while you perform. Perform mode follows your role too, so a bass player or singer sees the same automatic (or own) version there as on the song screen.

Perform mode showing a song full-screen with previous and next controls
Perform mode: one song after another, built for the stage.

Bands

A band groups a set of members and a shared repertoire of songs and playlists. Open the Playlists tab and look under Bands, or tap the + button, name it in the New band dialog and tap Create to create one.

A band screen with members, instruments and a list of band songs
A band: members, instruments, and a shared song repertoire.

On a band's page you can:

Live session

Band live keeps everyone's phone on the same song, in time, during a rehearsal or a show — over your own Wi-Fi network, with no account and no internet. Start it from the Playlists tab.

The live session screen showing a leader and connected band members
Band live: one phone leads, the rest follow along in real time.

What it needs: Every phone must be on the same Wi‑Fi network. A hotspot from one phone works too.

Keep Fiddle open on every phone for as long as the session runs — it only works while the app is open, on the same Wi-Fi network, on all phones involved.

No Wi-Fi? One phone can share its own hotspot (the “mobile hotspot” or “tethering” setting of the phone), and the other phones join that hotspot like any Wi-Fi network. The phone that shares the hotspot can lead the session. The hotspot only connects the phones to each other, so nothing has to be online.

Leading a session

Enter your name, then under Lead the session give the session a name and tap Start the session. Whichever song you open is sent to everyone who has joined — including its key, capo and tempo, and, if you opened it from a setlist, the setlist's name and order.

Your own screen shows this phone's address — the one the others type if they cannot find your session. If the phone has more than one usable address, the most likely one is shown first and the rest are listed below it as other addresses of this phone. If you turn your hotspot on after starting the session, the list updates when you come back to Fiddle. Addresses of mobile data or a VPN are never shown, because the other phones cannot reach you through them.

The session starts even if Fiddle cannot announce it on the network. In that case you see Other phones may not find this session on their own. If it doesn’t appear, choose “Enter the address by hand” on their phone and type the address above. under the address: the others should use Enter the address by hand on their phone and type that address.

Joining a session

Enter your name, then under Join tap Look for sessions and tap the session that appears in the list. If nothing shows up, tap Enter the address by hand, type the leader's Address — shown on the leader's own screen — and tap Connect (the field stays above the keyboard while you type). If you are connected to the leader's hotspot, an Android phone may list the session as Session on the hotspot you’re connected to instead of under its name; on an iPhone, the leader's session may not appear in the list at all, so use Enter the address by hand there. Download the whole setlist in advance is on by default and fetches the leader's setlist in the background so each song opens at once; switch it off if you only want the current song.

Songs you receive from the leader are matched to your library by title and artist: if you already have a song with the same title and artist (or the same title where one of the two has no artist saved), Fiddle links the two so you play from your own copy — with your own version for your role, if you have one — instead of getting a duplicate. If more than one of your songs match that way, Fiddle asks Which song is this? so you can pick the right one, or None, use the leader’s copy to take the leader's copy as a new song anyway. (This question only appears while the automatic song-opening switch below is on; with it off, the question waits until you switch that back on, as long as the leader is still on that song.) Only when nothing matches does the leader's copy get saved to your library as a new song, exactly like anything you import yourself, and it stays there after the session ends. Received songs are not automatically added to any playlist or band of your own. On the song screen, while you're following, Link to a song… lets you repoint or remove this link by hand. Turn Open the song the leader picks automatically on (it is on by default) to have each song the leader opens jump onto your screen automatically; with it off, tap Open the song yourself when you're ready.

If a linked song's role has your own version and the leader's shared copy of it has changed more recently, A newer version has arrived. appears on the song screen with a choice between Show leader’s / Show mine and a Replace mine button to bring yours up to date.

Keeping the click in sync

Because every phone's own speaker has a slightly different delay, Fiddle can measure and correct for it so the whole band's metronome clicks land together. From the sync card, the leader taps Sync up the band’s sound (greyed out until someone has joined) — each follower's phone then listens through its own microphone for a burst of clicks, roughly 5 to 10 seconds depending on how many phones are in the session, so keep phones close together in a quiet room and use the speaker or a cable rather than Bluetooth. Followers are asked for the microphone permission in advance, on the same card. Click follows the leader, on by default, makes each follower's phone click in time with the leader's metronome whenever it is running; you can also nudge the timing by hand with the ±1 / ±5 ms steppers next to it.

Metronome

The Metronome tab is a full metronome: tap the tempo in, or set it with the steppers, choose a Time signature and Subdivision, pick a click Sound, and shape the Accents pattern by tapping each beat to cycle it between accented, semi-accented, unaccented or silent.

The full metronome screen with tempo, signature, subdivision and accent controls
The full metronome: tempo, meter, subdivision, sound and accents.

If the time signature you need is not among the chips, tap Custom: Beats sets the number of beats in the bar, from 1 to 16, and Note value the note value — 2, 4, 8 or 16. The same choice is on the screen where you edit a song.

The metronome keeps playing even if the screen turns off or you switch to another app — Android shows a "Metronome is playing" notification with a stop button for as long as it runs.

Tuner

Open the Tuner tab and switch between Strings and Drums at the top. The microphone starts listening as soon as the tab opens — there is no separate start button — and if the metronome happened to be running, Fiddle stops it first, since its clicks would spoil the reading. Fiddle asks for the microphone permission only once you open the tuner, and the sound is never recorded or stored.

Tuning strings

Pick an instrument preset — Guitar, Drop D, Bass 4, Ukulele, Violin, a fully Chromatic mode, and more — then play a string. The gauge shows whether it's flat or sharp and by how many cents. Adjust Sensitivity and Reference pitch below the gauge if needed (beside it on a wide screen). Tap one of the note dots under the gauge — one for each string of the preset — to hear that string played as a Reference tone through the speaker, so you can tune by ear as well as by the gauge. Note names follow the same setting as chords (see Settings below): German or English naming, or As in the song — and since the tuner has no song, that option follows your interface language: in German, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin the note a whole step above A is called H, in every other language it is B.

The string tuner showing a note name and a tuning gauge
String tuning: play a note and read the gauge.

Your own tunings sit in the same row as the instrument presets, after the last built-in one (in settings they are listed under My tunings). Tap the "+" chip at the end of that row to create one: give it a name and a string count from 3 to 8, then set each string's pitch with steppers (a play icon lets you check each one). Long-press one of your tunings to Edit or Delete it; the built-in presets can't be changed.

The tuning editor with a name field, string count and a stepper for each string's pitch
A tuning of your own: name it, set its string count, and tune each string.

Tuning drums

Switch to Drums and choose what to measure — Lugs, Centre or Free — then set the drum kind, size, number of lugs and which Head you're tuning: Batter head or Resonant head. My drums lets you save this whole setup under a name and switch between drums in your kit later, the same way string tunings work; long-press one to rename or delete it.

Hit about 2.5 cm from the rim, next to the lug, with the other head muffled, and hold the phone close to that same spot (about 5 cm away) rather than the middle of the drum; wait for the sound to die away between hits. Tap Use this lug as the target to make your last hit the target for the rest of the lugs, instead of the built-in one.

The drum tuner showing the current lug's target pitch, with a few of the lugs arranged around the head below it
Drum tuning: work around the lugs one by one, tighten or loosen to match the target.

Import & export

The Import & export tab is also where you back up or move your whole library, and where you export a single song, playlist or band.

The Import & export tab with library backup and export options
Import & export: back up your library, or export one item.

Under Library:

You can also prepare songs on a computer with the Fiddle song editor in your browser, then save them as a library JSON file and bring it into the app with Merge library from a file (JSON).

Under Export, tap Song, Playlist or Band, search for and pick one item, and a panel at the bottom of the same screen offers the formats for it.

The export screen with a searchable list and format choices
Pick an item to export; the format choices appear in a panel below it.

A song can be exported as Lyrics with chords, a ChordPro file, or a PDF; a playlist or band as JSON (a playlist can also be a PDF). Every export goes through your phone's own share sheet, so you choose exactly where it goes — Fiddle never sends anything on its own.

Settings

Open Settings from the gear icon on the library tab.

The settings screen scrolled to show language, display and metronome options, down to the top of the tuner section
Settings: language, display and metronome defaults, tuner, library tools and more.

Deleting your data

At the very bottom of the settings screen, Danger zone has three buttons. What they delete cannot be brought back. The one exception is the library: songs with their versions, playlists and bands can be imported again from a backup file you saved. Settings, your own tunings and saved drums are not in that file.

Each button first tells you what will be lost. Before deleting the library or all data you can tap Save a backup first there: it saves the same backup file as Save library backup (JSON) and then brings you back to the same question, so saving a backup never deletes anything by itself. After Continue comes a warning that this cannot be undone, and finally you have to type the word shown on the screen before the last button works. Cancel at any step leaves everything as it is. When the deleting is done, Fiddle restarts by itself. While an import is still saving songs, the three buttons are greyed out.

Frequently asked questions

What permissions does Fiddle ask for?

Only the microphone — for the tuner, and for click-sync calibration on a follower's phone during a live session — and each time only right before it's needed, with an explanation on screen first; you can decline and still use the rest of the app. Everything else Fiddle needs (the metronome's background notification, access to the local network for a live session) is granted automatically when you install the app and never prompts you.

My phones can't find each other in a live session

No session found. Check that everyone is on the same network, or enter the address by hand. If searching doesn't find the leader's session, make sure every phone is really on the same Wi-Fi network (some routers isolate devices from each other, which blocks this — a phone hotspot avoids that) and that Fiddle is open on all of them, or ask the leader for their address on the Live screen and enter it by hand under Enter the address by hand. All phones also need to be running the same version of Fiddle; joining fails with a message telling you to update if they don't.

Does Fiddle need the internet?

No, on purpose: Fiddle works entirely offline. It never connects to the internet on its own, has no analytics and collects no data about you — the only network feature it has at all is the local Wi-Fi live session described above, which never leaves your own network. To add a song, type it in or import it from a file you already have.

How do I move my library to a new phone?

On the old phone, go to Import & export and tap Save library backup (JSON) to save a JSON backup, then send that file to the new phone however you like (email, cloud storage, a cable). On the new phone, install Fiddle and use Merge library from a file (JSON) to bring it in.

Where is my data stored?

Only on your phone, in Fiddle's own private storage. Nothing is uploaded anywhere. Uninstalling the app deletes everything, which is exactly why Save library backup (JSON) is there.

Contact and privacy

For questions about the app, open Settings → Legal and contact → Contact, or write to support@nemgic.com directly. Use Report content from the same section, or from a song's share menu, to report copyrighted content or a problem with a specific song.

Fiddle's full privacy policy — what data the app does and doesn't collect, and why each permission is needed — is available from Privacy policy in settings, and linked at the bottom of this page.