In Songtrix, Lyric Segments are used for the Lyrics track.

Their segment sheets have only one event type available, the Text event, which holds the words or syllables of the lyrics in the song.

While lyric segment sheets have the standard layout and operations of all segment sheets, they also have many special features.

Unlike the other tracks, lyric segments have only one segment line, with all lyric events placed horizontally on the same line.  As a result, there is no scope axis needed to indicate what each line represents.

Link To Melody

Since the Lyrics track generally accompanies the Melody track, you will almost always want to have a thumbnail of the melody showing at the top of lyric segment sheets.  This can be removed with Show Melody options on the Links page.

The melody is drawn similar to how it appears in the work sheet, but with a larger size.  It is very helpful for aligning your lyric events with the notes they belong to.

In Track View, If you want to look more closely at, or change the melody at a particular location, you can click on the space that it occupies to jump directly to the area for editing the melody events.

Selection or Text

Because there is only one type of lyric event, the lyric segment basically operates in two modes.

When the Selection tool is active, events can be selected and manipulated with the usual operations, except that lyric events cannot overlap each other.

When the Text tool is active, the segment events behave as a stream of text, which can be edited entirely from the keyboard, as you might expect for any text editing application.

Events are sized for your words and syllables as you type.  New events are automatically created whenever you break a word or syllable by typing a space or hyphen, or using the Tab or arrow keys.

Special Characters

All the usual text characters can be used in lyrics, but there are several characters which have special functions for controlling text formation in Lyric Sheet reports, depending on your Lyrics track setup.

• Commas (, ) indicate the end of a line in Lyric Sheet reports.

• Periods ( . ) indicate the end of a line in Lyric Sheet reports.

• Question Marks ( ? ) indicate the end of a line in Lyric Sheet reports.

• Exclamation Marks ( ! ) indicate the end of a line in Lyric Sheet reports.

• Hyphens ( -) indicate syllables which are part of the same word as the following event.  These syllables are rejoined into words (and the hyphen removed) in Lyric Sheet reports if space permits.

• Underscores ( _) indicate syllables which are part of the same word but are explicitly repeated for musical effect.  These are converted to hyphens in Lyric Sheet reports.

• Square Brackets ( [) cause the start of a new line in Lyric Sheet reports, but are not displayed.

Navigating Text

The following keystrokes are used for navigating text when editing lyrics.

Left	Move left one character, or to the previous event if at the start of one.
Right	Move right one character or to the next event if at the end of one.
Tab	Move to the next event.
Shift+Tab	Move to the previous event.
Backspace	Delete the character to the left.
Delete	Delete the character to the right.
Space	Terminate the current event and start a new one.
Hyphen	Add the hyphen to the current event, terminate it and start a a new one.
Underscore	Add the underscore to the current event, terminate it and start a new one.
Comma	Add the comma to the current event, terminate it and start a new one.
Period	Add the period to the current event, terminate it and start a new one.
Question Mark	Add the question mark to the current event, terminate it and start a new one.
Exclamation Mark	Add the exclamation mark to the current event, terminate it and start a new one.
F2	Activates the Text tool for a selected event.
Esc	Drops the Text tool and selects the current event.

Snap To Notes

If the lyrics are to accompany the melody in the Melody track, you will also certainly want to enable the Snap To Notes options on the Links page.

This automatically locates the lyric text cursor to the start of adjacent melody events when the Left and Right arrow or Tab keys are pressed, making the correct placement of lyric text much easier.

It also auditions the note relating to each of the lyric events whenever they are created, or receive the focus for editing.  This makes it possible to enter a stream of lyrics quickly and confidently.