Tech Tips / Start making synchronised lyrics for your music
I probably sound like a psychopath by telling you that I don't use a cloud-based music platform. In fact, I only use it to play my music more easily on my Google Nest Mini, and even then, it's content that I have uploaded from my library.
One thing that sucks half of the time with a music collection locally instead of online is the fact that we don't generally have lyrics appear.
Today, I'll be giving you a quick guide on making your own lyrics, and adding it into an audio player software.
Before I start, I should warn you that a lot of music software does not support lyrics, so you may have to download other pieces of software. VLC, Windows Media Player (old and new), Rhythmbox and YouTube Music are examples of applications which do not have support for lyrics. On macOS, I'm pretty sure Apple Music works, and on Windows I use Rhythmbox. I can't exactly remember which application I used on Linux Mint, but there are certainly some out there.
Step 1: Find the lyrics to your track
For this guide, I'll be using the English version of the track 'Lifelight' in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I've already done the lyrics to this in the past, and it's public in a GitHub repo (https://github.com/ExperiencersInternational/lyricfiles/raw/main/Bandai%20Namco%20Studios%2C%20Sora%20Ltd./Super%20Smash%20Bros%20Anthology/Super%20Smash%20Bros%20series/Lifelight.lrc). The first step that we'll want to do is to find the lyrics. In my case, the Smash Wiki hosts the lyrics for me, but I would Google ‘[song] lyrics'.
Once you've found your lyrics, copy it, and we’ll proceed onto the next step.
If you're unable to find the lyrics, I'd advise trying to open a Notepad window and see whether you can decipher what's being said throughout the entire song. Copy it once you've done doing that.
Step 2: Start synchronising to your music
Let's start synchronising your music. I'm using a free web tool that is available at https://lrc-maker.github.io/. When you've opened the page, click the pen icon and paste the lyrics you copied earlier into the text box. You can fill out the title, artist and album name fields, but they aren't required so don't bother with it.
Take a look at the bottom of the screen, and you should notice an icon that has an up arrow inside of a box. This is the upload menu, and it allows you to upload the song that you want to use so you can synchronize it correctly. Click on it and click on the menu that pops up and upload the music that you're synchronising the lyrics to.
After that, look at the top of the screen and click on the icon next to the pen. This is the window where we will be synchronising all of our content. When you're ready, you can press the play button at the bottom to start synchronising your music. At the start of a new line spoken, press the space bar (you'll also need to press it if there are lines separating different verses). If you are on mobile, you can toggle an on screen space-bar so that you can still use this.
When you've done synchronising it, go back to the pen icon, and click the download icon in the box.
A window should pop up on your device asking you where to save it. Save it in the same folder where the song that you used is. Make sure it's also named the same as the song, e.g. ‘007. Lifelight.lrc'.
After that, if you have a music software that is compatible, you should see the lyrics when playing it, and it'll be synchronised. I can't really write a guide on how to do it for every music software, but for Apple Music, I believe you enter the Now Playing menu, and for Retro Music, when playing a song, click on the button which looks like a message with a musical note by it.
Consider supporting me by subscribing and sharing: