175. Can I enter note-based lyrics if my song does not have a melody?
Note-based lyrics are much more flexible than line-based lyrics - they allow you to enter lyrics at a specific position (e.g. under specific melody notes), and have more formatting options. However the lyrics must be entered by associating them with a specific note on the melody or soloist track. To enter note-based lyrics, you press the [L] button in the notation window and type your lyrics into the box that appears. When you type your lyric, it will be placed under the currently highlighted note; to advance to the next note, press Enter, or Tab. To go to a previous note, you can press Shift+Tab.
If your song doesn't have a melody, you could consider using the following method to enter your lyrics:
- Enter a note - any note - on each beat in bar 1.
- Go to Edit | Copy from.. to... Copy from bar 1 to bar 2; number of bars to copy = 1; # times to repeat copy = [however many bars your song is].
- Enter your note-based lyrics
- Go to Edit | Erase from.. to... Erase from bar 1; # bars to erase = [however many bars your song is]. Uncheck 'Lyrics'.
The lyrics will stay at the position you where you entered them. If you need to correct a typo, you could use the Lyric event list - press the [#] button in the notation window and click [Edit Lyrics]. You'll see that you could also use the event list to manually enter lyrics at a specific position. Another way to insert formatted text at any point in your song, is to toggle into editable notation mode, right-click where you want to insert the text, and click on 'Insert Section Text'.