Realbook

A singer’s songbook for the stage: lyrics, chord charts and keys.

  • iPhone
  • iPad
  • Mac (Catalyst)

2026

My mother is a singer. She often sings at jams, those jazz evenings where everyone improvises together: you have to give the musicians your key and know the chart by heart. She kept her songs in a folder of notes, and asked me for an app to hold the lyrics, the chord charts, her key and the original one, and to prepare her setlists. You refuse your mother nothing: here is Realbook, built in September 2026.

The app is on her iPhone, her iPad and her Mac, synced through her own iCloud account, with no server and no subscription: a title is enough to add a song, the artist and the artwork find themselves, the lyrics are looked up in an open database, and a chart can be read from a photo of a lead sheet. On stage, the lyrics or the chart show very large, and the screen stays on.

The name comes from the Real Book, the 1970s collection of jazz standards, a nod to the fake books musicians passed around in the 1940s and 1950s to play at jams. The app keeps their spirit: a notebook, a grotesque typeface, a touch of hip-hop.

The song list: titles, writers and keys, with search and filters by type, key and group.
The chord chart of “The Glory of Love”, with the performer’s key and its original key.
Stage mode: the chart in large type on a black background, with buttons to make it bigger or smaller.
The setlists, as coloured cards, each with its number of songs and its length.

What was done

  1. 01

    The app

    One app on iPhone, iPad and Mac, whose layout follows the screen’s width: tabs on the phone, the list and the song side by side on iPad and Mac, with the Mac’s keyboard shortcuts.

    Expo · React Native · Mac Catalyst

  2. 02

    Storage and iCloud

    Songs, their lyrics, their chart, their photos and the setlists kept on the device and mirrored into the user’s iCloud, through a native module; without iCloud, everything stays local.

    Swift · Core Data · CloudKit

  3. 03

    Search

    A search by subsequence of letters, “mfv” finds My Funny Valentine, ranked by relevance; the sorts, filters, groups and the index on the edge.

    TypeScript

  4. 04

    Chart reading

    The chord chart read from a photo of a lead sheet, on the device, with Apple’s text recognition, a strict chord vocabulary and doubtful bars flagged.

    Swift · Vision

  5. 05

    Online lookups

    The artist and the artwork found in the device’s music or the Apple Music catalogue, the lyrics in an open database; no account, and everything works offline.

    iTunes Search · LRCLIB

  6. 06

    The player

    The song played from its copy on the device, from Apple Music or as a thirty-second preview, in a floating player, in the background too.

    Apple Music

  7. 07

    Stage mode and setlists

    Lyrics or chart very large, the screen kept on, the size and case remembered; setlists ordered by dragging songs.

Isometric drawing of an iPad on a music stand, an iPhone lying flat and an open Mac. By step: on the iPhone, a song’s page with its artwork, then a grid of twelve notes for its key; on the iPad, a chord chart, then the same in stage mode, very large on black; on the iPhone, a small player with a sound wave, then the song list with its index; on the Mac, setlists in columns; finally lines joining the three devices to a cloud, iCloud.

How it works

  1. Scroll: the drawing follows.

  2. 01 / 08

    Add a song

    A title is enough. “Find it” fills in the artist and the artwork, from the device’s music or the Apple Music catalogue. The lyrics are looked up in an open database, or typed; a photo of a chart or a PDF can be added to the song’s page.

  3. 02 / 08

    Note its two keys

    Each song carries the key she sings it in and the original one. You pick major or minor, then the note on a grid of twelve, or “I don’t know yet”. Her key shows on every song in the list, and large on stage.

  4. 03 / 08

    Write the chord chart

    The chart reads like a fakebook: four bars per line, “%” to repeat the previous one. You tap a bar and type the chord. It can also be read from a photo of a chart, on the device itself: doubtful bars are underlined, to be corrected.

  5. 04 / 08

    Listen to the song

    The song plays from its copy on the device, from Apple Music, or as a thirty-second preview. A small player stays at the bottom of the screen while you read the chart, and the date of last listening is updated.

  6. 05 / 08

    Find a song

    The repertoire is searched with a few letters: “mfv” finds My Funny Valentine. You sort it by title, artist, date added, last played or key, filter and group it by type or by key, as a list or a grid of covers, with an index on the edge, like the tabs of a paper songbook.

  7. 06 / 08

    Go on stage

    Stage mode shows the lyrics or the chart very large, her key in a box at the top, and keeps the screen on. The text grows or shrinks, in capitals or centred if she likes, and the app remembers it for the next time.

  8. 07 / 08

    Prepare a setlist

    For each concert or jam, a setlist: songs ticked in a list, or added with a long press, then put in order by dragging them, each with its key. “Start the set” opens the first song in stage mode.

  9. 08 / 08

    The repertoire on iPhone, iPad and Mac

    The repertoire is on the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac, synced through her own iCloud account, with no server: offline, everything stays on the device. On iPad and Mac, the list and the song read side by side. A backup saves to a file; in French or English, light or dark.

Specifications

Collection
Personal products
Date
2026
Role
Design and development
Built with
Expo · React Native · native Swift module · CloudKit
Platforms
iPhone · iPad · Mac (Catalyst)