[stevelundberg]

I hope someone can help me find the right software package for my father-in-law. He leads worship regularly and uses a word processor to write his songsheets in the familiar style...
chord line
lyrics
chord line
lyrics
The problem is that when he reformats the lyrics or splits/joins lyric lines the chords have to be re-entered.

What I seek is a package or module that will "link" chords with words so that lyric editing can happen as desired and the related chords will "follow" the words.

I've seen ChordMaker do a reasonable job of this but it seems laborious to use, embedding one chord at a time into an imported ASCII file.

On the other hand, Tabs, Lyrics & Chords handles importing of ASCII tab files or songsheets and has an RTF text editor but still lacks the ability to link chord to word.

Can anyone help?

[stevelundberg]

So, after ten years, my father-in-law is using a relatively modern computer that can handle today's software. So I renew my question:

Aside from ChordMaker, which he has used, can anyone recommend a program that is (hopefully more) adept at producing songsheets with chord & lyrics together??

[Cacacas]

I haven't found any. Word is my best friend for that. Or better yet, notepad. Guitar Pro works good for tabs.

[KenM]

Make Music's "Print Music" (or its big brother "Finale") will do this, albeit a few tricks are needed. When chords and lyrics are entered, they link to a particular note or rest. So to make just a chords + lyrics sheet, your start with a staff, fill it with quarter rests, enter your lyrics and chords in appropriate places, and then hide the staff. There are some discussions of this in the Make Music forum. I tried to add a link here but was not allowed, you can go to Make Music's web site and search their forums for "chord sheet".

Using real notation software such as the Make Music programs has the added benefit that you can quickly transpose the sheet to a different key, and all chords change appropriately.

[Cacacas]

Also Tab Tuner is a free transposing tool that works really well for chords. Just copy and paste, hit transpose, voila! It's found at tabtuner dot com.

[stevelundberg]

Originally Posted by KenM

Make Music's "Print Music" (or its big brother "Finale") will do this, albeit a few tricks are needed. When chords and lyrics are entered, they link to a particular note or rest. So to make just a chords + lyrics sheet, your start with a staff, fill it with quarter rests, enter your lyrics and chords in appropriate places, and then hide the staff. There are some discussions of this in the Make Music forum. I tried to add a link here but was not allowed, you can go to Make Music's web site and search their forums for "chord sheet".

Thanks for the referral and the tips too! I'll check it out.

Originally Posted by KenM

Using real notation software such as the Make Music programs has the added benefit that you can quickly transpose the sheet to a different key, and all chords change appropriately.

I'm pretty sure that transposing is covered by ChordMaker too.

Thanks!

[stevelundberg]

Originally Posted by Cacacas

Also Tab Tuner is a free transposing tool that works really well for chords. Just copy and paste, hit transpose, voila! It's found at tabtuner dot com.

Now *that's* sweet -- so easy, anyone can use it.

Thanks!