6. Chords and lyrics

The Chart

The Chart is the song’s chords as a chord chart, the way a fake book or iReal Pro writes them: bars four to a row, each section boxed at the left, repeats and endings written once, and a box for every beat to put a chord in. It’s where you write a song’s changes quickly, and where a band reads them. A Smart band plays whatever you write here (Smart Tracks).

The Chart pane

Available on every platform.

Opening the Chart

Make any pane a Chart from the view picker on its bar (Panes), or choose the Write Chords workspace, which puts the Chart beside the tracks and the transport, linked. The Chord Chart template starts a song with a Chords track holding a first progression to type over, and a band (New songs and templates).

What it shows

• Bars in rows, four to a row unless you choose otherwise. A section starts a new row, with its marker’s name and colour in a box at the left.
• The time signature at the start and wherever it changes; the key at the top.
• Chords in their boxes. A bar has a box per beat: four in 4/4, three in 3/4, two in 6/8. A chord lasts until the next one. One chord fills its bar, two share it.
• Repeats as a chart writes them: |: :| with ×3 in the margin, first and second endings, % for a bar that plays the one before again, and D.C. or D.S. al Fine or al Coda where a passage comes back. They come from the song itself: where its chords’ clips play again (a repeated clip or a linked copy), the chart writes them once.
• A chord named from the notes, where the song has no chord symbols, is drawn lighter. A chord that sits off the beat (from an import) has a small mark under it. A name Stab can’t read stays as you typed it, in red.

The bar playing is lit, and the Chart follows the playhead. Panes of the same link colour share the time and the caret with it. Click a box while playing to jump there.

Moving around

Click a box to put the caret on it. With a keyboard:

• ← and → move a beat; with ⌥ (Alt on Windows and the web), a bar.
• ↑ and ↓ move to the row above or below.
• Home and End go to the first and last bar.
• | on a box moves to the next bar’s first beat, as it does in the chord’s field.
• Add ⇧ to pick a range of bars, or drag across them. Esc lets go of the range.

Typing chords

1. Put the caret on a box.
2. Type the chord’s letter, A to G. A field opens in the box with the letter in it; type the rest (Am7, F#m7b5, G7/B).
3. Press Return. The chord is written and the caret moves to the next beat.

Return on a box opens its chord to change, and so does a double-click. % on a box writes the bar before’s chords into this bar. Delete clears the box, or every bar of a range; so does committing an empty field.

In the field, each word goes into a box of its own, so you can type a whole line at once:

• C Am F G puts four chords on four beats.
• | moves on to the next bar: C | Am | F G is three bars. A | at the start is the caret’s bar, so a progression pasted as | C | Am7 | F G7 | starts there.
• . leaves a beat as it is (the chord before carries on), and - clears one.
• % repeats the bar before, and N.C. writes no chord.

Each time you commit, the whole line is one undo step. The first chord you write in a song without a Chords track makes one, starting from the chords the chart shows, those named from the notes too, so the rest of the chart stays as it was (The Chords track).

The palette

The palette writes chords without typing. On a Mac, on Windows and on the web it’s a card along the bottom of the Chart, with Chords, the key and × at its top; × puts it away, and Show Palette in the Chart’s menu or its ⚙ brings it back. The pane remembers it. It reads from top to bottom:

• The readout: the chord in the box, written as the chart will show it, and where it goes (bar and beat). Hear plays it again.
• The key’s chords: I ii iii IV V vi vii° in a major key (A Bm C♯m D E F♯m G♯° in A), i ii° III iv v VI VII in a minor key. They’re the key signature’s where the caret is; in a song with no key set, the key the whole song’s notes suggest, major or minor, the same in every section. One tap writes the whole chord.
• The roots: a flat piano, the naturals below and the sharps and flats above them, each named in the song’s key (C♯ in A, D♭ in A♭). Keys outside the key are dimmer. A tap writes that root, major, in the box at once; another root replaces it.
• The families: major, minor, 7, maj7, m7, half-diminished, diminished, sus4, augmented, sus2 and 5, then Type…, which opens the box at the caret for typing, with its chord in it.
• The extensions and alterations (6, 9, 11, 13, add9, alt; ♭5, ♯5, ♭9, ♯9, ♯11, ♭13), added or taken away by a tap.
• The moves and writes along the bottom: Back, Next and Next Bar move the caret; / Bass, % Repeat, N.C. and Clear write.

The root and the family of the chord in the box are lit in brass, an extension or alteration and the bass are tinted.

Slash chords: tap / Bass and the readout says “/…” and the roots are outlined: the next root you tap is the bass. / Bass again on a slash chord takes the bass away. On touch, touch and hold a root to make it the bass at once.

The caret stays on the box until you move it, so you can build a chord tap by tap. While the song is stopped, each tap plays the chord, on the band’s keys if there are any, else on a keys part or a guitar. To write without hearing it, turn off Hear Chords as You Tap in the Chart’s menu (on touch, also in the tray’s ⋯); Hear still plays the chord.

Playing chords in

With a MIDI keyboard connected and the song stopped, play a chord while the Chart is the pane you’re working in. Stab names it when you let go (the lowest note is the bass), writes it in the caret’s box and moves on a beat. The sustain pedal alone moves on a beat without writing. See MIDI devices.

The Chart’s menu

Right-click a box (or the range you picked) for:

• Bars a Row: 2, 4 or 8.
• Play Out Repeats: every pass written out in full instead of folded into repeats.
• Show Palette, and Hear Chords as You Tap (on at first).
• Clear Chord, or Clear Bars for a range.
• Repeat Bar (or Repeat Bars) › ×2, ×3, ×4: the bars become one passage playing that many times. With Insert Bars for the Repeats on (it is, at first), bars are inserted for the extra passes and the rest of the song moves later; off, the bars after them on the Chords track are written over and nothing else moves.
• Make This Pass Different (with Play Out Repeats on, in a bar that plays more than once): that pass gets chords of its own, and the others still repeat. Write Out Repeat gives every pass its own.
• Insert Bar Before and Delete Bar (or Delete Bars): the whole song’s bars, as on the ruler (Inserting and deleting bars).
• Add Chords Track, when the song has none.

A chord written in a bar that plays more than once is every pass’s, as the chart shows: change it once and every pass changes.