SongbookBB

The SongbookBB plugin

 Songbook is a LOTRO plugin for browsing your ABC song files and playing them with the click of a button. It was originally made by Chiran, who released his last version in the summer of 2013.

In 2014, The Brandy Badgers (one of the bands in the Grand Order) looked at new ways to sort all the ABC music files we had prepared. Nimelia, our resident master of tools, offered to take a look at what we could do with the Songbook plugin. With the blessing of Chiran, she fixed some bugs and added lots of new features.

SongbookBB, also called Songbook: The Badgers Chapter, has been updated irregularly over the years.

DISCLAIMER: As in earlier versions, the plugin and associated tools have worked great for us during our testing, but that’s not to say it will do so for everyone. Hence, we offer the plugin to you to test, to get feedback on any bugs or recommendations for further development. Development of the plugin will continue, based on any bugs uncovered and feedback on its utility.

Files - SongbookBB and Songtools

SongbookBB is currently at v1.02, released 25. November 2025.

Songtools were last updated 18. august 2015. They include:

  • Songbooker - the datafiller which builds a library that allows Songbook access to your ABC files. Remember to run Songbooker everytime you make changes to your ABC files.
  • Songbrowser - for tagging your ABC files with parts setups.

You can download both the plugin and the tools here.

For more information on how to setup and use the plugins/tools, have a look in this Google document. It also contains the complete patch notes for the plugin. A short installation guide is below.   

Most recent patch notes

Changes from v1.01

  • Fixed a rare bug when saving settings.

Changes from v1.00

  • French/German play/sync commands should work now (the language file encoding had accidentally been changed)
  • Fixed a bug in the instrument slot save for DE/FR locale settings.
  • Added some additional abbreviations as suggested: Misty Mt Harp, Lonely (Mt) Fiddle, etc.

Changes from v.99:

  • The Jaunty Hand-Knells are recognized by the plugin
  • The plugin is fully translated and should work on German and French game clients.
  • Currently, the plugin checks for English instrument names if it cannot find French/German ones. E.g., searching "i:tambour" will find songs with drums, and the instrument drop list will add the tambour if there is a drum part. This can be disabled in the Settings window (lowest check box under "Badger settings").
  • Added settings option to search track names
  • Bugfix: Instrument search for “basic harp” now also finds tracks named “harp”
  • Bugfix: Fixed possible drag/drop of announce button

Installation and how to use

Here’s how to install and use the plugin: 

  • Unzip the Songbook plugin zip file your “Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/Plugins” folder.
  • IMPORTANT – Download the Songtools (Songbooker and Songbrowser), for quick generation and maintenance of your library.
  • IMPORTANT – Before loading the plugin, use Songbooker to build your library. Run it whenever you have made changes to your song library.

To load the plugin in-game, type ‘/plugins load songbookbb’, or use your favourite plugins manager. Command line options include:

  • /songbookbb show – shows the Songbook window
  • /songbookbb hide – hides the Songbook window
  • /songbookbb toggle – toggles the Songbook window
  • /songbookbb – lists command line options

Please note that the Songbook window does not always show the first time you load the new plugin. To fix that, type “/songbookbb show”  and the window should pop up.

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