About...
At our church we needed a simple way to share chord charts and sample recordings with the team. I’d already built an early version of Concertina and it felt promising. We tried Worship Tools and a couple of other solutions, but they didn’t quite fit what we had in mind. Financially, we just can’t stretch further, especially when the other tools don’t feel right for us. What I think is a nudge from above has encouraged me to keep going with this. I guess I'm a bit biased - but the worship director and I both like what it has become.
The name ... Honestly I've had so many ideas over the years that never got off the ground because I couldn't think of a name for them, but not this time. I’m a bit nostalgic about those old collapsing “concertina” files from the 90s, and I was in the car thinking about the app and the name just seemed obvious at that moment. I’ve still got a bright red concertina file that I bought from k-mart where I keep older songs and a burgundy one with hard sides and a clip for current music ... current from the 90's that is.
How will it work? You’ll drop your pdf, docx, mp3, m4a files - whatever you’ve got - into a Google Drive folder. You'll also be able to create an optional csv file in the folder to store additional details about your music that Concertina will use to help organise it. Concertina will make it easy for your team to access the files. The app doesn't touch your files and you stay in control of who can access them using the sharing controls in Google drive.
There's a setlist feature so you can put the songs for a service into a list and download a single pdf containing all the music for the service. You could print it or just use it on stage as one scrollable file on your iPad or even your phone. The setlist feature isn't in the demo.
If you're worried about what Concertina might cost, please don't be. I've got a heart for small churches and this feels like it might meet a need in that space. Remember in the gospels where Jesus was enraged and chased people out of the temple because they were trying to make a profit out of the people who had come to worship? There are examples around where I think that has happened in modern worship and that's not where I want to be. If Concertina happens to take off and I face real costs somehow that I can't sustain then I'll think about how to handle that at the time.
If you try the demo and have an idea for a commercial application for Concertina, let me know! If it actually turns a profit how great would that be?!
Concertina is not ready yet - but it’s coming soon. I'm working on this on my own with the help of AI. If you’d like early access for your worship team, check in here and I'll update the site when it's ready for you. In the meantime, have a look at the demo using the button on the homepage. Flick me an email to let me know or if you have any questions.
Julian
julianddavidson at gmail com
November 2025.