News

Version 3.1 of the Songs LaTeX package was released on September 12, 2018. See the Downloads section for details.

Full Songs package documentation now available online!

What is the Songs package?

The songs package is a software suite that allows a user to create beautiful songbooks using the (free) LaTeX type-setting system. The software can create songbooks with chords over the lyrics, songbooks with just lyrics, and sets of overhead slides for corporate singing. Chords can consist of chord names or guitar tablature diagrams but not full sheet music. Here are some screen shots (click on any for a full-sized image):

a songbook with chords	a songbook with just lyrics	the Vim editor window

Lyric books, chord books, and slide sets are all generated automatically from a single master document. That way you can print lyric books for singers, chord books for musicians, and slides for the congregational singing, without having to maintain three separate documents. The documents produced by the software are typically in PDF format, but can be in any of the many electronic formats supported by LaTeX.

It's Free!

The songs package software is freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. In order to use it, you will also need three other pieces of free software:

• Any distribution of LaTeX2e (e.g. MiKTeX)

• The Vim file editor

• A program for viewing and printing PDF files (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader)

All of this software is freely available for almost any operating system you may own. See the Downloads section for details on exactly what you will need and how to install it.