Manual Introduction

Introduction

The most popular way to write song sheets is to display the lyrics and place each chord right above the syllable where the chord change happens.

You can find literally any song written that way on ultimate-guitar.com or somewhere else in the internet.

While this is a very compact and well approved format it has some downsides as well.

chords only sheet

Personally I prefer to write the lyrics on one sheet, and the chord progression on another one.

The purpose of a chord sheets is to quickly recognize and understand the underlying structure of the song.
Most songs are build with a common set of more or less the same building blocks.
These blocks typically consist of 2,4,8,12 or 16 bars.

It is a common practise to have 4 bars in a row.

practice lyrics or chord changes

If you want to actually perform a song it is absolutely mandatory that you know the lyrics, the melody and the chord changes.

Listen to the original song to learn the melody.

With the lyrics only sheet you play the changes by heart and read the lyrics.

With the chords only sheet you sing the lyrics by heart and read the changes.

Eventually you want to be able to play a song with no sheet at all.