Concert teleprompter for singers

Forgetting a verse in front of a room is a particular kind of awful, and the fix has not really changed in thirty years: put the words where you can see them. What has changed is how much that costs and how obvious it looks.

The touring answer

A confidence monitor is a screen at the front of the stage showing the lyrics, usually driven by someone at the side of the stage following the singer. It works beautifully and it needs a screen, a computer, cabling and a person. For a festival slot that is normal. For a Friday night in a bar it is not.

The tablet on a stand

This is what most singers actually do, and it works. The two things that let it down are the stand height and the page turning. Put the tablet low and you spend the night looking at your chest, which the room sees. Use an app that makes you turn the page and you take a hand off the mic or stomp a pedal on every verse.

Both are fixable. Get the screen up near eye height, and use a prompter that moves on its own. QMe Prompter scrolls by listening to you sing, so it keeps up when you stretch a line or repeat a chorus, and there is nothing to tap.

Smart glasses

The newest answer, and for a singer without an instrument in their hands, the best one. The words sit in your field of view, you look at the audience, and nobody can tell. QMe puts the same lyrics on Even Realities G2 glasses and on wired display glasses like XREAL and Viture. The set runs from your phone in your pocket.

Practical things that matter more than features

• It has to work with no signal. Venue wifi is not a plan. Your songs live on the device.
• Big enough to read at arm's length. Text size, and enough contrast on a dark stage.
• A set, not a pile of songs. In order, with the next one a swipe away.
• A way back in. When a song falls apart, one tap on the line you are actually on.
• Backing tracks in time with the words. If you sing to tracks, the words should follow the track, not a guess.

Questions singers ask