Manual User Preferences
Settings that affect rendering
About the Preferences or Settings System
You can tweak the rendering of your chord sheets by changing some settings.
Globally affecting all sheets or each sheet individually.
There are three settings sources, grouped together in a hierarchical order.
The idea is to have reasonable default settings but also have the ability to make individual changes if needed.
Below each chord chart you will find a table with the effective settings.
Check out an example.
The settings sources and order of inheritance are:
default settings
These are hardwired and cannot be changed.
user specific
These settings are your personal defaults and affect all the charts you create.
song specific
These are settings that you only want to apply to a specific song sheet.
effective settings
These settings will eventually be applied.
Website Settings
Song order-by
You can sort your song charts by artist or title.
But it is particularly useful to set the order to "last modified".
This helps you to find the most recently changed songs quickly.
Compilation order-by
You can sort your compilatios by title or last modified.
Page Settings
Paper Size - Paper Format
The default is to use A4 (ISO) as the paper size.
You can also switch to Letter (US) or Legal (US).
This can be useful if you want to actually print the PDFs or combine the resulting PDF with other PDFs that are not A4 format.
Note that changing the paper size may also require changing your chart.
Page Layout - Orientation
The default is to use a page layout with portrait orientation.
But sometimes a landscape orientation can be more appropriate.
E.g. if you have 8/16/32-bar progressions.
See an example (landscape): Joseph-Joseph
Page Layout - Footer
The default is to print a footer with the URL to the chordsheet, the page number and the last edit date.
If you prefer you can disable the footer.
Canvas Color
The default colors are black & white. And that is of course best suited for printing.
But e.g. to incorporate a png into a video it might be useful to use different colors.
Or to have inverted colors as a dark mode.
See an example using Custom Colors.
Font Color
The default colors are black & white. And that is of course best suited for printing.
But e.g. to incorporate a png into a video it might be useful to use different colors.
Or to have inverted colors as a dark mode.
See an example using Custom Colors.
Fonts
Font Headline
The default font for the document headline is Patrick Hand SC.
Font BodyThe default font for the document body is Helvetica.
You can change the font for text headline and text body.
The DejaVu Font or GNU FreeFont contain many more characters and also support writing systems that are not based on the Latin alphabet.
See an example using the GNU Free serif font family.
If you need an alphabet that is not covered by the available fonts, don't hesitate to contact me. There is an open font project that aims to cover all the languages of the world. Noto fonts, so there's a chance I can install a missing alphabet to suit your needs.
Font LyricsBy default, the lyrics use the same font as the document body. But you can also choose a different font. Esteban and Crimson are particularly suitable for this.
Font Style Section TitlesBy default, the section titles use a regular font style. You can change this to bold or italic if you like.
General Layout Settings
Font Size / Number Of Rows (per page)
Since all margins and positioning are dependent on each other, you cannot adjust the font size arbitrarily.
There are predefined values you can choose from.
The sizes are M (medium or regular), S (small) and XS (tiny or extra small).
The global default value is M.
The smaller the font size, the more lines a page can contain.
In addition, the setting for line spacing also controls the number of maximum possible lines.
Vertical / line spacing
You can set the line spacing to fractions of the line height divided by twelve.
The default value is 8, which means 2/3 of a line height.
You can set this value to "none" to squeeze as many lines as possible onto a page.
However, to keep the chart easier to read, you should usually use a larger value.
A good approach to find appropriate values might look something like this:
- Finish your chart first
- If it does NOT fit on a single page, reduce the line height value
- If it still doesn't fit on the sheet, reduce the font size value
- If it fits on the page, try increasing the line height to make the chart more readable
Without vertical spacing
With some vertical spacing
Alignment Of Chords
This setting mainly affects bars with only one chord.
As a rule of thumb, if the song doesn't have split bars, use center alignment.
Otherwise, the left alignment may look tidier.
Left Alignment (default)
Center Alignment
Offset Left
The offset left value is basically an indentation of all chords. This makes the section titles stand out more and shows the clear order of the song structure.
Which may be useful or desirable in some cases.
Example Offset Left
Example Offset Left
Chord Settings
There are different notation variations for some of the most common chord types.
It is therefore advisable that you set your preferred style in your profile user settings so that it is applied to all your charts.
But of course, as with all settings, you can only apply the settings to one song.
Major nth Chords (6th, 7th, 9th, 13th)
There are three different variants of major seven chords.
Remember that you select your preferred rendering style in the settings.
In the source one must always write such chord as Bbmaj7 or Bbj7.
Tip #1 – The variant with the triangle or delta symbol is not only very popular.
It also saves some horizontal space, so if you use a lot of split bars this might be your best bet.
Tip #2 – You CANNOT mix the different rendering styles. Only one at a time. The sample image above was created using image editing software.
Minor Chords
There are four different ways to write minor chords.
Remember that you select your preferred rendering style in the settings.
Tip – You CANNOT mix the different rendering styles. Only one at a time. The sample image above was created using image editing software.
Diminished Chords
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Half Diminished Chords
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Slash Chords
...
Musical note B - variation by geographical region
In the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands B usually refers to the note a semitone below C, while B-flat refers to the note a whole tone below C.
However, in Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, the label B is used for what, above, is called B-flat, and the note a semitone below C is called H.
Wikipedia (CC BY-SA )
There are two settings – for reading and writing – to toggle between “international” and “german” nomenclature.
- Reading: “international” (Bb B) — “german” (B H)
- Writing: “international” (Bb B) — “german” (B H)
Strict Transposition
If you want to use E♯ when transposing to the key of F♯-Major you have to enable strict tranposition.
The same applies to C♭ and the key of G♭-Major.
By default, F and B are used, which are the enharmonic equivalents. And easier on the eyes – and the brain.
This setting probably only makes sense when creating teaching examples for music theory.