HOW TO GET CHORD GRIDS ON YOUR MANUSCRIPT.
Brian Lemin May 2013
I need to say that this is not a “hand holding” article, just an outline that I think a reasonably competent computer user can follow.
Firstly what are you starting from?
I took this example from the internet as being probably the most common form in which uke chords are indicated in in ukulele charts.
G Em
I heard there was a secret chord
G Em
that David played and it pleased the Lord
Basically is this the format that shows the chords above the lyrics. The only way that I can get chord grids on to those lyrics, is to manually drag and drop the chord grids that I have created on to those lyrics.
There is a commercial set of chord grids available, which I started with but when I started using extended and altered chords I needed to make my own grids. See the following link for the commercial programme: http://www.ukechords.com/chord.html
Here is the Chordpro layout format.
[G]I heard there was [Em] a secret chord
[G] that David played and [Em] it pleased the Lord
It is clear that this style has the chords “in line” and surrounded with square brackets. This style of chart presentation can reasonably easily be converted into charts that have ukulele grids on them in various layouts.
The Big problem?
How can you easily convert the layout of chords “above the line” to “chords in-line with square brackets around them”? (CHORDPRO format)
There are quite a few programmes out there that claim to do this job for you automatically and they all work reasonably well, but I have grown to like a fiddly programme called ChordsFun on the whole it does the job better than many of the other programmes I have tried. It’s a beta programme and all sorts of funny things happen with it, but just get used to it as it does do what it says it will do quite well. http://www.tmg.it/software/chordsfun
It is pretty easy to use really. Though it clearly told me what to do, I forgot what is the most important first step of any of these automatic conversion programmes that is CONVERT THE FILE TO PLAIN TEXT BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING.
Here’s how to convert your song to plain text:
Firstly copy and paste to whole text of the song into Notepad or similar plain text programme. Save it
You can then open the saved file, copy the chordspro formatted text and enter it into your ChordsFun converter or the chordspro converter of your choice (Scriptasaurus can do this for you if you want. See below)
Now get the chord grids on to your song chart.
Here is How.
Open your computer to Ukulele Geeks : http://ukegeeks.com/
Click on the “Try it” of Scriptasaurus.
Clear the edit song box (cntrl+A) then delete.
Paste in your chordpro ( plain text) formatted song in the box, (cntrl+v) then click Update.
On the left of your page you will see your new song and using the “appearance” tab you can change how you want your chord grids to appear.
The programme has many other features but it not the place for this article to be a tutorial. There are good tutorials supplied. My only problem is that many of the advanced and extended chords that I use are not recognized as yet. But the author tells me he is getting there.
There are quite a few sites that publish their song charts in chord pro format which will do away with the intermediate “conversion” process. A web search will find them.
Brian Lemin May 2013
I need to say that this is not a “hand holding” article, just an outline that I think a reasonably competent computer user can follow.
Firstly what are you starting from?
I took this example from the internet as being probably the most common form in which uke chords are indicated in in ukulele charts.
G Em
I heard there was a secret chord
G Em
that David played and it pleased the Lord
Basically is this the format that shows the chords above the lyrics. The only way that I can get chord grids on to those lyrics, is to manually drag and drop the chord grids that I have created on to those lyrics.
There is a commercial set of chord grids available, which I started with but when I started using extended and altered chords I needed to make my own grids. See the following link for the commercial programme: http://www.ukechords.com/chord.html
Here is the Chordpro layout format.
[G]I heard there was [Em] a secret chord
[G] that David played and [Em] it pleased the Lord
It is clear that this style has the chords “in line” and surrounded with square brackets. This style of chart presentation can reasonably easily be converted into charts that have ukulele grids on them in various layouts.
The Big problem?
How can you easily convert the layout of chords “above the line” to “chords in-line with square brackets around them”? (CHORDPRO format)
There are quite a few programmes out there that claim to do this job for you automatically and they all work reasonably well, but I have grown to like a fiddly programme called ChordsFun on the whole it does the job better than many of the other programmes I have tried. It’s a beta programme and all sorts of funny things happen with it, but just get used to it as it does do what it says it will do quite well. http://www.tmg.it/software/chordsfun
It is pretty easy to use really. Though it clearly told me what to do, I forgot what is the most important first step of any of these automatic conversion programmes that is CONVERT THE FILE TO PLAIN TEXT BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING.
Here’s how to convert your song to plain text:
Firstly copy and paste to whole text of the song into Notepad or similar plain text programme. Save it
You can then open the saved file, copy the chordspro formatted text and enter it into your ChordsFun converter or the chordspro converter of your choice (Scriptasaurus can do this for you if you want. See below)
Now get the chord grids on to your song chart.
Here is How.
Open your computer to Ukulele Geeks : http://ukegeeks.com/
Click on the “Try it” of Scriptasaurus.
Clear the edit song box (cntrl+A) then delete.
Paste in your chordpro ( plain text) formatted song in the box, (cntrl+v) then click Update.
On the left of your page you will see your new song and using the “appearance” tab you can change how you want your chord grids to appear.
The programme has many other features but it not the place for this article to be a tutorial. There are good tutorials supplied. My only problem is that many of the advanced and extended chords that I use are not recognized as yet. But the author tells me he is getting there.
There are quite a few sites that publish their song charts in chord pro format which will do away with the intermediate “conversion” process. A web search will find them.