PRACTISE ON YOUR PHONE: INSTALL THE CHORD LENS CHORD APP. no app store needed

Most practice doesn’t happen at a desk. It happens on the sofa with a guitar, at the piano with the phone propped on the music stand, or in a rehearsal room ten minutes before the band starts. A laptop is a clumsy thing to balance on a knee. A phone is already in your pocket.

The Chord Lens Studio runs in any modern browser, phones included. Installing it adds an icon to your Home Screen and opens the Studio full screen, with no browser address bar or tabs in the way. It behaves like an app because, to your phone, it is one. There is nothing to download from a store and nothing to keep updated by hand.

This guide covers putting it on an iPhone and an Android phone, what the phone version does well, and what is still a job for a computer, so you know which to reach for.

The Studio offers to install itself once you’ve opened a song on that phone, so the quickest way is to open a song first. If you’d rather do it straight away, go to chordlens.app/studio?install and the install steps show at once.

In the screenshot the demo song Coming Home is open on a phone, 390 pixels wide, with the video hidden. On the left the chord cards run across the top in time and the Lead view shows the chords over the words; in the middle the Instrument view draws the B chord on guitar; on the right the Key & tempo sheet is open.

The sheet only shows on a phone, on the Studio home, and only once a song has been opened on that phone. If your account already has songs, that counts too. It never shows inside the installed app, and if you tap Not now it doesn’t ask again. Open chordlens.app/studio?install to bring it back.

On iPhone, use Safari. Other browsers on iPhone, and the in-app browsers inside social apps, don’t offer Add to Home Screen the same way, so the Studio doesn’t show the steps there. Copy the link into Safari and it works.

On Android, the Install app button appears when Chrome offers to install the site. If it doesn’t, Chrome’s own menu has an Install app or Add to Home screen item that does the same thing.

Open any song and the chords run across the top as cards, the one playing now lit, in time with the music. Under them, one row switches the view: Lead shows the chords over the words, Lyrics the words alone, Grid the chords bar by bar, and Instrument the shape of the chord playing now, large, with the chords either side of it.

The Instrument view draws the chords for guitar, ukulele, mandolin, bass or piano, the same instruments as on a computer. Set a capo and the shapes follow it; the Studio can suggest a capo when one gives you easier open shapes. See how to transpose chords for what the capo is doing.

Key & tempo sits at the bottom left, showing the key and BPM. Open it to move the key up or down a semitone at a time, change the tempo, or jump to half, normal or double speed. Loop sits at the bottom right. The ⋯ button holds the rest: Sounds, with the metronome and spoken cues; Display, with the chord size, Simplify and Nashville numbers; Sections; Share; and Print or save as PDF.

The video can be full width, a compact square beside the chords, or hidden so the chart gets the whole screen. On a small phone, Hidden is often the best way to practise.

Splitting a song into stems runs on your computer’s graphics card, in Chrome or Edge on a desktop or laptop. A phone can’t do it, and the Studio says so rather than trying. Chords, lyrics and sections still work on the phone; it’s the split, and with it soloing or muting one instrument, that needs the bigger machine.

The Chrome extension is the same story. It runs in Chrome on a computer, beside the YouTube video, and phone browsers don’t take extensions. On a phone, paste the YouTube link into the Studio instead.

So use each for what it does best: the computer for splitting and mixing stems, the phone for reading the chords, changing the key and looping a part with your instrument in your hands.

Updates arrive by themselves. When a new version of the Studio is out, the app shows a bar, New version of Chord Lens, with a Reload button, the next time you come back to it. Nothing reloads on its own, so a song is never stopped halfway through a practice run. Tap Reload when you’re ready.

If you prefer not to install anything, the Studio works the same in the phone’s browser; installing just saves the taps. For a fuller picture of practising with Chord Lens, read slowing down a song and practising with a metronome on the song.