Tutorial - Creating Your First Lyric
Starting afresh
From the Liptikl menu, select File -> New.
This presents you with a window, containing various buttons, lists and text boxes.
Working your way around the user interface, you'll see that there are various numbered areas. In general, you put your data in to the numbered areas in order, and work your way through from lowest number to highest. Once you reach the end, you have some lyrics!
1 - Ideas
Liptikl generates real lyrics, by examining text in the three text fields in the Ideas section, and generating lyrics in response to the generate button. It mashes together words from each of the ideas boxes to come up with its suggestions.
Tip: The more interesting the source material you use in your ideas boxes, the more interesting the lyric suggestions generated! You can think of your favourite source materials like spices or ingredients, and then build up a collection of your favourites to add when you want. You can then add as little or as much as you like!
So, start by putting some ideas into any or all of the three fields.
You can type the data in directly, or paste-in some text from any source. There are also various other options you can use, which are on a pop-up menu that you can get at either by either right clicking (Windows) or control clicking (Mac).
Once you have some ideas in, move on to the Lyrics area!
2 - Lyrics
The first thing to do here is probably just to click on the Create Lyrics button
You'll see the first verse of your lyric appear in the text box next to it (provided you have first added some words to at least one of the ideas text boxes). You might, or might not, like what you see, but you're just starting to play with Liptikl, and there's no telling what you might come up with! Press Create Lyrics a few more times if you want!
The Lyric Rule combo box lets you change the rules used to create your lyrics. The rule consists of a series of numbers. Each number stands for the number of words to put in each line of the lyric. Each number stands for one line of text. For example, the number 3 4 5 6 would be four lines (as there are four numbers!). The first line would have three words, the second would have 4 words, the third would have five words, and the fourth would have six words.
You can easily create and use any rule you want, just type a new rule into the Lyric Rule combo box, press the Create Lyrics button, and see what happens!
3 - Verses
The Verses area contains the verses of your lyric.
Assuming you come-up with a verse you like, press the Add button to have it appear in your verses list. Add as many verses as you want!
Alternatively, you can press the Replace button if you want to copy-down the lyric from above to replace the currently selected verse in the list.
You can press the Up and Down arrow buttons to move your verses up and down in the list.
You can also delete your verses with the Delete and Delete All buttons.
Finally, press the Edit button to copy your currently selected list item up to the Lyric area where you can do some more work on it!
Lyric options
One of the wonderful things about Liptikl is that you have a lot of options to help you work creatively with your text.
To access these options, you need to access a pop-up menu that you can get at either by either right clicking (Windows) or control clicking (Mac) on the Lyric editor.
Click on a word:
Lock Word
Prevents the clicked word in the lyric from being changed when you next click on the Generate Lyrics button.
Unlock Word
Allows the clicked word in the lyric to be changed when you next click on the Generate Lyrics button.
Thesaurus
Search via a thesaurus engine for the selected word (e.g. "ThisWord" in the screenshot above)! Selecting this option launches your web browser to display a webpage with a "Go" button. Pressing that button automatically loads a webpage that uses your selected word.
Note: if you select any of the "other thesaurus sites" listed below the Go button, which are there for your easy reference, then these do not automatically work with your selected word.
Dictionary
Search via a dictionary engine for the selected word (e.g. "ThisWord" in the screenshot above)! Selecting this option launches your web browser to display a webpage with a "Go" button. Pressing that button automatically loads a webpage that uses your selected word.
Note: if you select any of the "other dictionary sites" listed below the Go button, which are there for your easy reference, then these do not automatically work with your selected word.
Search
Search via a search engine for the selected word (e.g. "ThisWord" in the screenshot above)! Selecting this option launches your web browser to display a webpage with a "Go" button. Pressing that button automatically loads a webpage that uses your selected word.
Note: if you select any of the "other search sites" listed below the Go button, which are there for your easy reference, then these do not automatically work with your selected word.
Search for all words
Search via a search engine for all the words in the lyrics, in a similar way to search above.
Unlock all words
Allows all words in the lyric to be changed when you next click on the Generate Lyrics button.
Lock all words
Prevents all words in the lyric from being changed when you next click on the Generate Lyrics button.
Edit...
Selecting this presents the following options for copy/paste etc.
The Ideas and Lyrics text boxes in Liptikl are editable, which means you can move words around by cutting and pasting, or even edit or manually add in new words. It is very useful to be able to do this, as words you want to use may appear, but not in the position you want them to - so you simply move them!
