ChordPro

New playlist feature

The most requested feature in ChordSheet has been playlists. So now we have just introduced a brand new manual playlist display. This requires a little bit of manual work but we think the results are worth the effort. ChordSheet now allows multiple songs in a single file like this…


{title:First Song in the Playlist}
[C]This [F]is the [G]first [C]song.

{soc}
Flick the screen left to move
to the next song in the playlist
{eoc}

{title:Second Song in the Playlist}
And, [C]this [F]is the [G]second [C]song.

{soc}
Flick the screen left and right
to move between songs in playlist
{eoc}

{title:Last Song in the Playlist}
So, [C]this [F]is the [G]last [C]song.

{soc}
Flick the screen right to move
to the previous song in the playlist
{eoc}

Stay tuned for more exciting playlist features soon.

ChordPro Import

I would like to manually input my music

I would like to manually input my music into Chord Pro, but I am having a hard time figuring it out. What text editor should I use? How can I make it look like your demo of Amazing Grace?

IMG_20140807_190940

I am really having trouble with this. I am fairly computer savvy, just not programming. I am also new to Android. Basically what I am trying to do is convert my binders of music to digital via tablet. What program is the best for doing that? I snapped a picture of the song I was trying first. Sorry, it is a little blurry.

 


 

Greetings,

What you are trying to do is exactly what I did. I had a bundle of over 200 songs and choruses that had been gathered over 30 years. They were in many different formats. They were riddled with errors and corrections and notes. I wanted everybody in our band to have access. Back then there was nothing like this, so I wrote this app for this exact purpose. It’s not as friendly as I would like, but once you get it started, everything will go pretty quickly and the results are tremendous.

Your picture is way more than a little blurry, but I think I got enough to give you a start. Great song!!!!

CREATING CHORDPRO FILES

  • Creating a song from scratch the first time is really hard and I completely understand your frustration. Once you get this figured out, it will be worth it.
  • I use a program called “Songsheet Generator 2.9” on my desktop to edit ChordPro files, but you can use Windows Notepad or any text editor. You cannot use a Word Processor like Microsoft Word unless you are very careful to save as an ASCII TEXT FILE.

EDIT CHORDPRO FILE

Enter these lines into your editor (sorry for my mistakes and typos, the picture was really blurry)…

  • Metadata commands are enclosed in curly braces like “{title:Overcome}” and “{comment:INTRO}”
  • Everything else is automatically interpreted as lyrics with chords embedded like “[D]” and “[Daug4]” inside the lyrics.
{title:Overcome}
{su:by Jeremy Camp}
{c:Capo 3}

{c:INTRO}
[/] [/] [C] [D/C] [C] [Em7] [Ddim4] [D] [G] [/] [/]

{c:VERSE}
[Gm]Seated above, enthroned in the Father's [C2]love
[Em7]Destined to die, [D]poured out for [D]all man[G]kind
[E]God's only Son, perfect and spotless [C2]one.
[Em7]He never sinned, but suf[Daug4]fered as [D]if He [G]did.

{soc}
All [C]author[B/C]i[C]ty, every [Em7]vic-tor[Dm]y [D]is [G]Yours.
All [C]author[B/C]i[C]ty, every [Em7]vic-tor[Dm]y [D]is [G]Yours.
{eoc}

  • Now, save the file as something like “overcome.txt”

TRANSFER TO ANDROID

  • This is another hard part. I have tried to describe the process at Welcome! but it’s kind of tricky the first time. The most important thing is to power off and back on after installing ChordSheet so that the directory is visible over the USB.
  • You can also try emailing the text file as an attachment and letting Android handle the conversion. When you open the attachment, ChordSheet should ask to be used, when you choose it, the file will get added to your ChordSheets. That works fine for one or two files, and for collaborating with others, but it’s an awfully hard way to enter a whole bundle of songs.

SUCCESS!!!!

When you succeed it should look like this…

overcome

dropbox Sync

Advanced Sync with DropBox using FolderSync

Please see DropBox sync with FolderSync to start using FolderSync. Once it is setup, there are 2 settings that you really need to make for it to work the way you expect:

  1. If conflicting modifications = Overwrite oldest
    Without this setting, it is possible to edit a file on both computers and get stuck in a never-never land where it reports “conflict errors” and won’t sync the file.
  2. Preserve files = Disabled
    The instructions say to “Set this if missing files are not to be deleted in sync. Disable at your own risk.” Without this setting, it is impossible to rename or delete a file, it just keeps getting downloaded again.
ChordPro Transpose Typography

Transpose songs to play in your key

ChordSheet has a smart transpose feature, which is enabled with a LongPress on the screen. It brings up this dialog box for you to choose the number of semitones to transpose…

Transpose Dialog

Transposed to key of "D"

Each semitone corresponds to a fret on a guitar or a key on a piano. Transposing from “C” to “D” is 2 semitones.

Geek Alert! Programming the transpose is easy but figuring out whether the resulting note should be displayed as a sharp or flat is difficult. Take the case of transposing up 1 semitone from “C”. Is that “C#” or “Db”? Are the notes of the “C + 1” scale: C#, D#, F F#, G#, A#, C? Or, are they: Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C? And, how can you tell? You have to know the key that the song was written in. There is a non-standard ChordPro extension, which is used by most programs to do this:

{key:C}

If this directive is specified, then QED. But, many songs don’t have this directive. When the key is not specified, the program has to be “smart” enough to figure it out. ChordSheet makes a pretty good guess, but I’m looking for difficult testcases, so email me anything doesn’t work, so I can increase the program’s intelligence.

Kindle Fire

ChordSheet submitted to Amazon Appstore

ChordSheet works amazingly well on a Kindle Fire, and now that it’s been submitted to the Amazon Appstore, soon it will be available to everyone.

dropbox Sync

Dropbox sync with FolderSync

FolderSync Lite

I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel, especially when it is as good a wheel as FolderSync. If you use dropbox, or any other cloud storage, you really need FolderSync anyway. With FolderSync Lite, it is trivial to setup a two-way sync between your ChordSheet files and a remote folder in your dropbox acount. This will keep all your ChordPro files up-to-date on your Android or iOS device and synchronize all edits/additions/deletions both ways. The FolderSync Full ($2.29) version supports SkyDrive, Dropbox, SugarSync, Ubuntu One, Box.net, LiveDrive, HiDrive, NetDocuments, Amazon S3, FTP, FTPS, SFTP, WebDAV or windows share (Samba/CIFS) accounts, and support for more platforms are planned. There is no way we could/should/would add all these features into ChordSheet, and with FolderSync doing it perfectly, there is no need for us to duplicate their amazing features.

Here are the steps to synchronize ChordSheet with your files in dropbox with FolderSync:

  1. Create an account for your dropbox (or SkyDrive,  SugarSync, Ubuntu One, Box.net, LiveDrive, HiDrive, NetDocuments, Amazon S3, FTP, FTPS, SFTP, WebDAV, etc…)
  2. Create a folder pair for your local Android folder (e.g., /Android/data/com.qynx.chordsheet/files) and your remote dropbox folder

For safety, start with an empty local folder and specify one-way synchronization from remote-to-local. After the first sync has finished, and your local directory is fully populated, you can change to two-way synchronization. Now, local changes (new files and edits) will be synchronized to the cloud.

ChordPro Import

How to import songs from www.chordie.com

If you are new to the ChordPro format, then you are going to have to start collecting songs. The best place to start is:

www.chordie.com ← index of 1000s songs

When you find a song you want to import, click the “chopro” format option in the toolbar on the far right of the screen. Then copy-and-paste into a text file or the builtin editor. This is easier than it sounds. Here are 3 screen captures that show how it is done…

 

ChordPro Typography

Multiline Lyrics

Version 1.2 adds enhanced typography including multline lyrics…

Landscape Display of Song with Multiline Lyrics

Here is the simple ChordPro extended format for the first line (ignoring the italics for simplicity) of this song…

[D]All my sins are gone.<2>(All my sins are gone.)<1>All because of [A7]Calvary.