ChordSmith is
a Giftware program
that can transpose song sheets from one key to any other. It
also can convert song sheets between two popular formats (ChordPro and Two-line). ChordSmith
runs on any computer, PC, Mac, or Unix/Linux that has Java 1.4 or
higher.
Who
can use ChordSmith?
If you play a chordal instrument such as guitar, piano, etc., and you
play "by ear" based on chords from song
sheets, you can use ChordSmith
to transpose your chords into any key you prefer.
If you use an app, such as OnSong, Chordinator or SongBook on your iPad or Android tablet, which requires its input to be in ChordPro format, you can use ChordSmith to convert your song sheets from two line format to ChordPro. ChordSmith has a batch feature that can convert multiple files all at once.
What
is a song sheet?
A
song sheet is a text file that has the chords and lyrics of a song.
Sometimes they are called "fake sheets" or "lead sheets". There
are three styles of song sheets that are most common on the Web:
"Two-line" style, ChordPro style, and "Rise Up" style.
Two Line Style Song
Sheets
The first style, which for want of a better name I call "two-line"
style, is
easiest
for humans to read. In two-line style, the chords are above the words
where the chord changes are to be made. It looks like this:
D C D7 Em A Once she came in-to my room, feathered hat, and all,
Here
is the result of transposing the above two-line example
from the
key of D to the key of F#:
F# E F#7 Abm C# Once she came in-to my room, feathered hat, and all,
ChordPro Style Song
Sheets
The
second song sheet style is called "ChordPro" and was developed to
be easy for a machine to read. Software exists (for example, Chordand Songsheet Generator) to convert ChordPro
text into HTML or PostScript. ChordPro has the chords embedded in the
lyrics using square brackets as delimiters. Here is a ChordPro
equivalent to the above:
O[D]nce she came in-[C]to my r[D7]oom, fea[Em]thered hat, and a[A]ll,
And
here is the transposed version:
O[F#]nce she came in-[E]to my r[F#7]oom, fea[Abm]thered hat, and a[C#]ll,
ChordSmith can
convert files from ChordPro to two-line format and the reverse. The
files must be text-only files; no HTML, no Word files, etc. ChordSmith doesn't
know how to handle the formatting features of those files. But see below in the section "What if my song sheets are not in pure text files".
Rise Up Style Song
Sheets
The
third style, popularized by Rise
Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook, is
designed to minimize space by putting the chords for an entire verse on
a single line following the verse like this:
A long, long time ago I can still remember how that music used to make me smile And I knew if I had my chance That I could make those people dance And maybe they'd be happy for a while
/ GD Em / Am7 C Em D / GD Em / Am7 C / Em Am D /
The
above example was borrowed from http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/charts.htm,
which describes the format in detail. ChordSmith
cannot convert this format (which I will refer to as
"rise-up" format) to or from ChordPro or two-line formats, but
it can transpose it from one key to another.
Where
can I find song sheets?
You can enter your own chords and lyrics into Chordsmith to create your own song sheets, but you
can also find song sheets for thousands of songs on the internet. One way is
to do a Google, Yahoo or Bing search for the name of the song you are
interested in, enclosed in quotes, followed by the search words "chords
lyrics", like this:
"You've got a friend" chords lyrics
Here are a
few
websites that provide free song sheets:
What if my song
sheets are not in pure text files?
OODocBatchConverter
is another program I wrote that can help you convert a bunch of files
from one format, say PDF, to another format, say TXT. The program uses
the free Apache OpenOffice
program to do the conversions. It can do any conversion that
Apache OpenOffice can perform because it uses Apache OpenOffice to do the
actual conversion. Without OODocBatchConverter you would have to
convert the files one at a time. Apache OpenOffice is an excellent office
suite that includes a word processer (Writer), a spreadsheet (Calc), a
presentation program (Impress), a drawing program (Draw), and a
database program (Base), all for no cost.
What is Giftware?
ChordSmith a
giftware program. I have enjoyed creating it
and I give it to you in hopes that you will enjoy using it. It is my
gift to you.
If you use it and like it, you might feel moved to
make a gift to me.
If so, you can do so with the PayPal
links below, with complete
security. Any amount
will make me happy. If you decide to make a gift, you will be helping
me pay for the maintenance of the program and this website.
If you decide not to donate money, maybe
you'd like to send
me a note about your
experiences with ChordSmith
(hopefully
good, but if not good, I need to know that too). I will
consider your
note a gift, for it is an investment of your time and interest.
NOTE:
If double-clicking does not launch the installer, then your machine
probably does not have Java installed. Click on the "Get Java" button
below to
download and install the Java Runtime Environment. Changes for version 3.30:
Added a panel to display the contents of a user-chosen song folder.
Combined the song folder panel with the ChordPro tools in a resizable tabbed panel.
Added
a menu item, "Edit>Extend Chord Lines with blanks" to help with
repositioning or adding chord names to the end of a line.
Added
a "Tools" tab to the Preferences Dialog to control the font size of the
tools (ChordPro commands panel and Song folder tree) separately from
that of the editor.
In the File open/save/save-as dialogs and
the batch convert dialog, the chopro filter now allows several
different common chordPro extensions, eg., chopro, cpro, chp, etc.
When opening a new file in the editor, it now scrolls to the top instead of the bottom.
Changes for version 3.20:
Added a set of tools to markup a song with ChordPro codes. (Access from Edit>Show ChordPro Tools menu item.)
Fixed
bug in conversion from chordpro of "{t:song title}" where it would
treat any line starting with "{t" as if it were a title. That caused it
to misinterpret other tags that started with t.
Changes for version 3.10:
Fixed the problem of program failure on the Mac. Many thanks to Al McPhee for his aid in troubleshooting the problem.
When
converting to ChordPro, now by default the program assumes that the
first non-blank line is the title and rewrites it in chordpro format
as: {t: myTitle}. When converting back from ChordPro to 2-line, removes
the chordPro formatting and left justifies the title.
Added a checkbox to the Preferences>General tab to enable/disable the ChordPro title markup.
Fixed operation of the Preferences Revert button.
Revised the program so that now it needn't be started from its home directory, but may be started from any directory.
Added .txt and .chopro filters to the Batch Convert "Input Files" dialog and the Open Files dialog.
Changes for version 3.00:
Added a "Preferences" panel to set the default song directory and the preferred font and font size.
Added an "Edit>Select All" menu item.
Made Batch Convert dialog input and output file selection buttons start browsing from the current default song folder.
Made
three items in the Edit menu maintain the selection after they are
completed so they can be applied in succession without reselecting:
Remove Chords From Selection, Remove Blank Lines From Selection, Insert
Blank Lines into Selection.
Rearranged order of same three menus.
Changed font of the Help file from Times to Helvetica.
If you have trouble installing ChordSmith
Windows Vista and Windows 7 users, please note: If your OS won't let
you install the program, download the zip file instead of the installer, or do the following with the installer:
Create a folder called "Chordsmith" on your desktop.
Start the Chordsmith Installer by double-clicking on the file
"installChordSmith.jar" that you downloaded from this web page.
Step through the installer until you get to where it asks you
"Select the installation path:".
Click the "Browse..." button and find the "Chordsmith" folder on
your desktop.
Select that folder and click the "Next" button.
Proceed until the installer completes the installation.
You can leave the "Chordsmith" folder on your desktop or move it
to any place you prefer.
If
you want a shortcut to ChordSmith on your desktop, find the
"ChordSmith_INTL.jar" file in the "Chordsmith" folder. Create a
shortcut by right-clicking on the file and selecting "Create shortcut".
Move the shortcut to your desktop.
Linux users, please read the following: The easiest way to install ChordSmith
is to download the zip version of the file and unzip it . Then set the
permissions on the "ChordSmith_INTL.jar" file to "Executable".
You can make a link to it an put the link on your desktop.
Double-clicking the executable jar file or the link file should start
the program.
To use the ChordSmith installer under Linux: Download the installer from the website. It should work with Linux if you have Java properly installed. Don't let your Archive program try to extract files from it.
Set the permissions on the installChordSmith.jar file to allow
execution. You might have to run the installer in a command terminal
like this: cd <directory containing the installer> java -jar installChordSmith.jar Make sure you install the program into a directory in which you have full permissions. You might need to set the execute permission on the installed ChordSmith_INTL.jar file. Once the program is installed, it must be run such that its working directory is the directory containing the ChordSmith_INTL.jar
file. So, probably the easiest thing to do is to create a command file
containing commands similar to the following two, perhaps named
"launchChordSmith": cd <directory containing the ChordSmith_INTL.jar file> java -jar ChordSmith_INTL.jar Then, whenever you want to launch the program, just invoke the command file.
