The band uses the songbook plugin to help us coordinate playing songs together. While there is a lot of information about plugins and the songbook, you often need to view information from multiple places to put all the steps together, so I have written this post to try to summarize all the information you need in a single place. This guide is written for absolute beginners and is geared toward using the songbook for playing multi-part files with our band.
I should point out that Siltharan has written an excellent tutorial to the LOTRO music system here which covers most of what I am discussing in this thread as well as other issues, so you may well prefer to use that tutorial instead -- actually I think our posts complement each other, since the focus of each is slightly different. So why did I write this? This post is step-by-step guide; it focuses on the exact steps and the exact order you need to do things if you are starting from scratch and want to go from there to playing a song with the band. It includes a few notes that may help you avoid some common problems that occur during setup and playing.
Step 1 - Create the Music and Plugins folders
For Windows 7 or Windows 8 users, navigate to your "documents\The Lord of the Rings Online" folder -- for example c:\users\courtney\documents\The Lord of the Rings Online
In this folder, create two folders called Music and Plugins unless these folders already exist
Step 2 - install the songbook plugin
download the songbook from http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info380-Songbook.html and unzip it. Inside the folder you unzip it to will be a folder called Chiran and a file called lotroplugin.xml. Move this folder and file underneath the 'plugins' folder.
When you are done with steps 1 and 2, your should have the following files and folders (you may have other folders and files in "The Lord of the Rings Online" folder as well):
documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Music (a folder)
documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Plugins\Chiran (a folder)
documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Plugins\lotroplugin.xml (a file)
Step 3 - install some music
You need some ABC files to play. If your Music folder is empty, you can add some files some ABC files from various sources. Here are some multi-part ABC files that our band has played in the past: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c3op6u7b8t12td0/buIQoKCJvW/winterstock%20Monday
Step 4 - setup the plugin
Go to the folder documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\Plugins\Chiran and execute the program songbook.hta. Follow the directions when the program runs; this makes the ABC files in the Music folder available to the songbook. You need to run songbook.hta everytime you change the ABC files in the Music directory.
Boot up LOTRO, go to the chat bar and execute the command /plugins refresh (this is needed to let the plugin manager know that you have added a new plugin). The chat window will now show available plugins, and the available plugins should include Songbook (0.92). You only need to execute this command one time, unless you update to a newer version of the songbook.
Type the following commands into the chat window (you will need to execute these commands each time you log on to LOTRO and want to play music):
/plugins load songbook
/songbook toggle
At this point, the songbook should appear on the screen with the list of songs that are in your Music folder
Step 5 - using the songbook
Equip an instrument (put it in the middle ["ranged item"] slot at the bottom of your character panel)
Press the M button on songbook -- little notes should come out of your instrument on the screen -- this puts you in "music mode," and now you can play any song
Select a song in the "songs" window of the songbook
Select a part of the song to play (usually the part corresponds to the instrument you have equipped). One way to select the part is by using the second button from the right at the top of the songbook (the button will say something like x:2 on it). Another way is to select the part from the Parts panel of the songbook (if the parts panel is not visible, you can make it visible by clicking on the settings button of the songbook, clicking the song part list visible check box, and then clicking the save button
Press the >| key (the fourth button from the left at the top of the songbook); a message should appear in the chat window that indicates that you are ready to play the selected part for the selected song.
Once one of the band members presses the |> key (the fifth button from the left at the top of the songbook, all band members will start playing their parts at the same time.
typing /songbook toggle in the chat window will show or hide the songbook, depending on it's current state
Step 6 - Advanced Topics
When playing in the band, sometime the songbook may misbehave; the quickest way of resetting it is to execute the following commands in the chat window:
/plugins unload
/plugins load songbook
/songbook toggle
See this post for how to put these on your quickslot bar for quick access.