The chord sheet

The chord sheet is the song’s harmony, bar by bar, written the way a lead sheet writes it. It is where you type a song for the band, and where you read the chords of any song the app plays. Open it with F5, the first of the window buttons in the toolbar (a page of chord names), or View > Chord sheet. A song from File > Demos and a new song from File > New open with the sheet in front.

Reading the sheet

• Each bar shows its number in the corner, and the time signature where it changes.
• Each section starts a new line, under its name: “Verse”, “Chorus”. A section played three times is headed “Verse ×3”. A double bar line marks where a section starts, and the final bar line, thin then thick, where the song ends.
• Each chord sits where its beat falls. “C A7” in a bar of four beats puts C at the start of the bar and A7 halfway along, on beat 3.
• Under each chord is its Roman numeral in the key: in C major, Fm is iv, and A7, which leads to Dm, is V7/ii. A chord with another note in the bass gets the figures musicians use for inversions: G7/B is V⁶₅, C/E is I⁶. Under a set or a micromode, its notes. What chords do explains what the numerals mean.
• A bar with nothing in it goes on with the chord before, written faintly so the bar does not look empty.
• A key change is written at the top right of the bar where it happens, such as “→ G major”.

Point at a chord to have it explained: “A7: A dominant seventh, V7/ii in C major. A secondary dominant: A7 is the dominant of Dm, the ii of C major, as if Dm were a tonic. … Its notes: A C# E G.” Hold the mouse button down on it to hear it, with its bass note under it.

While the song plays, the bar playing is framed in white and the chord sounding is the brightest name on the sheet. The sheet scrolls along with the song while Follow playhead is on (the button with the arrow in the toolbar).

Typing chords

Click a bar to select it (it gets an orange frame), and type. The first key opens a field over the bar.

So typing a song is: click bar 1, then C, Tab, Am7, Tab, Dm7 G7, Tab, C, Enter.

If the computer keyboard is playing notes (MIDI > Typing keyboard to piano is on), the letter keys play instead of typing: double-click the bar or press Enter first.

What a bar can hold

Several harmonies go in one bar, separated by spaces:

Chords and their names lists the ways a chord can be written: Cmaj7, CM7 and CΔ are all read, Cm7 and C-7 too. What you type is written back in one way: a numeral becomes its chord (“V7” in B♭ major is written F7), and “CM7” becomes Cmaj7. Sets, micromodes and rows are explained in Beyond keys.

If something in a bar cannot be read, the field stays open and the reason is written above the sheet in red, for example: Bar 3: “Hm7” is not a chord (Am7, G/B), a set (3-11 T2, {0,4,7}), a micromode (Menor 3), a row form (P0, RI7) or N.C. Nothing changes in the song until the whole bar reads.

Where the chords fall in a bar

The sheet follows the convention of lead sheets for several chords in one bar:

In 3/4, two chords take two beats and one: “C G7” puts G7 on beat 3. With a / anywhere in the bar, every word is one beat, so you can put a chord on any beat you like.

Writing what the song plays

A song opens with its chords on the sheet already. A demo writes the chart it was made from; any other song, such as a MIDI file you opened or a recording you imported, gets the chords the app hears in it.

Write the chords the song plays, at the top of the sheet, writes them again from what the song plays now, in place of what the sheet says. Use it after you change the notes in the piano roll. It writes the bass player’s note after the slash when that note is in the chord, writes each section’s first chord again at its start, as charts do, and in a song whose key is a set or a row it writes sets or micromodes. One Undo takes it all back. While a band plays from the sheet the button is hidden, since the band’s notes come from the sheet.

Changing the bars

Right-click a bar for its menu:

• Type in this bar, Clear this bar, Move the playhead here;
• Insert a bar before and Insert a bar after add an empty bar, and everything after it moves along: notes, chords, sections, key, tempo and time markers. The new bar is empty, so the chord before goes on through it, as in a printed chart.
• Delete this bar takes the bar out, with its notes and chords, and everything after it moves back. The key, tempo and chord that were going on at the end of the deleted bar go on after it.
• End the song here: the band stops after this bar.
• Band on …: a break for the band on that chord (see Shots, holds, rests and pushes).
• Variation a, Variation b and Style for the band, from that bar on (see Song form and sections).

To work on several bars at once, click one and Shift+click another, or use Shift with the arrow keys; Ctrl+A selects every bar. Clicking a section’s name selects all of its bars. The bar numbers on the playlist’s ruler have the same insert and delete items.

How it looks

At the top of the sheet:

• Show names the same harmony in other ways, without changing a note: As written, as Chords, as Pitch-class sets or as Micromodes. Beyond keys tells what each says.
• Bars per line: Fit the names puts as many bars on a line as show every name, and the numeral under it, at its full size: 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 or 16, so that lines start where four-bar phrases do. A name may sit just after its beat when the one before needs the room, and words after the numeral, such as “borrowed”, are written where they fit (the numeral’s colour and the name’s hint say the same). The menu shows how many fit now, as Fit (4). With the sheet in the main window, the zoom keys over it change the size of everything, so zooming out fits more bars. Or pick a number, and names that don’t fit get smaller.
• ⛶ Fill the window puts the sheet in the playlist’s place in the main window, where a line holds more bars. Back to the playlist puts it back in its own window. The same switch is View > Chord sheet in the main window.

These choices are remembered for next time.

Chord sheets as text

Charts are often passed around as text, in a message or a forum post. Ferrous Lineup reads and writes them:

Title: Autumn Song
Key: C major
Tempo: 120
Style: Bossa nova

[Verse ×2]
| C  | Am7 | Dm7 G7 | C |
| F  | %   | G7     | C |

• File > Import chord sheet… opens a .txt file like this one (or drop it on the window) as a new song, with the band playing it and the chord sheet open. If a line cannot be read, nothing is imported and the status bar says which line and why.
• File > Export chord sheet… writes the song’s sheet the same way, with the bars lined up in columns.
• On the sheet, Ctrl+C copies the selected bars as text, and Ctrl+V pastes text from the selected bar on. Pasting brings only the chords; the song keeps its own key, tempo and style. A single line with no |, such as “Dm7 G7”, goes into one bar.

Everything but the bars is optional:

In a bar goes exactly what you would type in a bar of the sheet: % plays the bar before again, and an empty bar | | goes on with the chord that was playing; ||, |: and :| are read as plain bar lines. A Key: or Time: line between bars changes the key or the time from the next bar on.

Roman numerals are read in the chart’s key, so this chart:

Key: F major
| I | vi | ii7 V7 | I |

is F, Dm, Gm7 C7, F, and the same text with Key: D major is D, Bm, Em7 A7, D: one progression in any key.