PadCue: a church pad app for setlists, click, and lyrics

What problem does PadCue solve?

A Sunday service or a three-set bar gig does not need a full audio workstation. It needs the pad to start in the right key, the click to reach the drummer, and the next lyric to reach the singer. Today that job is spread across a laptop running a session file someone else built, a phone playing a pad from a streaming app, and a tablet with slides that a volunteer advances late. When the leader changes the key during the sound check, three people have to change three things, and one of them forgets. When the venue Wi-Fi drops, the cloud app that hosted the setlist goes with it. The result is dead air, a pad in the wrong key, or a click that starts on the wrong bar. None of this is a mixing problem. It is a cueing problem, and cueing tools are built for people who mix.

What would PadCue do?

PadCue would be a performance-only app for iPad and the web. You build a setlist song by song: pad key, tempo, time signature, count-in, and lyric slides. On the night, the screen shows one song at a time with three large targets: start the pad, start the click, advance the lyric. A key change is a single tap that moves the pad and the transposed chord sheet together. A second device on the same network mirrors the set as a confidence monitor for the singer, without any control buttons that could be pressed by mistake. Everything is stored on the device first and synced when a connection exists, so a bad venue network changes nothing. Sharing a set to the rest of the band is a link, not an export.

How would it work?

1. 1Build a setlist with pad key, tempo, count-in, and lyric slides for each song.
2. 2On stage, tap one large target to start the pad, one for the click, one to advance lyrics.
3. 3Change the key with a single tap and the pad, chart, and monitor follow.
4. 4Share the set as a link so the band and the singer's monitor stay in step.

Who is it for?

• Volunteer worship teams that rehearse once and play once, with a rotating cast.
• Cover bands playing three sets a night from a shared, changing setlist.
• Solo and duo acts in small venues who run their own pads and click.

How do you run pads, click, and lyrics live today without a dedicated app?

The cheapest working setup uses tools you probably already own. Put the pads on a phone or tablet as a folder of long audio files, one per key, and play them through a small mixer or a stereo splitter. Label the files with the key in the filename so you can find the right one in the dark. For the click, use a metronome app that lets you save presets per song and set a count-in, and send it to the drummer's in-ear on its own channel so the room never hears it. For lyrics, a presentation app on a second tablet works if one person owns the job of advancing slides and nothing else. Export the deck as a PDF as a backup, because the presentation app is the thing most likely to fail when the venue network drops. Write the setlist on paper with the key, tempo, and count-in for every song, and put a copy on every music stand. When the leader changes a key at sound check, change the paper first, then the files. The paper is the source of truth precisely because it cannot crash. The limits are obvious. Three devices means three chances to fail and three people to coordinate. A key change in the moment means switching audio files while the singer waits. Sync between the pad and the click depends on human timing. This setup is fine for a band that plays the same set every week. It breaks for a rotating volunteer team or a band that takes requests.

What do people use today?

What would it cost?

Prices are proposed. Founding members lock in the lowest price if we build PadCue.

Questions people ask

Where does this stand?

PadCue is a proposal, not a product. This page collects demand from search and answer engines. Askwright builds it only if enough people join the waitlist and say they would pay. Read how this works.

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