Tab, chord and songsheet software

I've been making my own song sheets using Corel Draw, which is a great program and gives me tons of flexibility, but it's labour-intensive and slow. I have to cut-and-paste the chord diagrams one at a time, adding finger-position dots each time when I change chords.

Any suggestions for suitable song sheet software that allows uke players to create and insert uke chord diagrams? I'm looking for something that could automate the process and help create song books with standard layouts. Inserting uke chord diagrams is a must.

My primary use would be to create songsheets with lyrics and uke chord diagrams, not melody line or tablature. but I'd like to know what I could use for those, as well.

I'd like to put the chord diagrams above the lyrics, not simply on the side or top of the page.

I was looking at one program called Busker, which offers a drag-and-click means to replicate song sheets, but it seems a bit of work and doesn't have chord diagrams that I can see.

Any suggestions or recommendations? Freeware, shareware is preferred, but commercial software is worth exploring, too, if it does everything i need.

I just use open office (but any office software will do) and the song sheet template and chord grid images from here. The sheets are intended to have the chord grids on the side but you can put images anywhere on the page. The chord grids are pretty big, but you can batch resize them to a more ideal size using gimp or photoshop or whatever. I just use standard text for tab, but I guess you could tab it out using powertab, take a screen shot of it and insert that image into the song sheet for a cleaner look.

Actually, you could skip the song sheet template and create your own that would be designed for chord grids over the words and just use the chord grids since it's a pretty good collection. There's some blank chord grids so you can make your own if you need some unusual chords.

This isn't the most professional method but it's free and works. If you take some time to set up a good template you could be pumping sheets out pretty quickly.

I've done similar things in Word, but I was looking for something dedicated, rather than generic.

I seem to recall there being a chord position font out there, but for the life of me I can't remember where.
If I find it, I'll post a link here.

If you want to try something more advanced, I have used Guitar Pro. I usually use it for tablature + chords and sometime lyrics. It will add musical notation too, if you like. Anyway, I like it because you can customize the chord diagram names. You can set it up for any tuning, including low G, and it will keep track of the chords you are using so it is easy to repeat them as they come up. It does help if you know a little bit about music (like measures and beats). I just got the upgrade, but haven't tested it yet. I have had a few complaints in the past, but they might have fixed them on the newest release.

–Lori

UncleElvis said:

I seem to recall there being a chord position font out there, but for the life of me I can't remember where.
If I find it, I'll post a link here.

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You're probably thinking of Chordette. I've never used it since I remember it being commercial only, but now it looks to be shareware. Just using the fonts would make things a little easier, but it's limited to first and second position chords only. But you could make your own fonts to have chords all the way up the neck.

I think making song sheets is going to be a pain in the ass no matter how you do it.

Thanks. I'll look at GP. I have the fonts from Chordette. They're handy but a bit of a pain to use since you have to search through about eight font sets to find the right character. I could make my own chord pattern fonts, yes, but that opens a whole new discussion about font creation software (which at present I don't have not am I knowledgeable about any of the packages).

Used to be able to save a page in a TTF file in Corel Draw, not sure if that's still true. Would require at least four font sets, though, maybe more. Have to look into that, too.

You can (or at least you used to be able to) create fonts in CorelDraw! That's how I got started making fonts.
I'd offer to make one for this, but since I switched to Mac, I've lost all my font stuff and Windows runs very poorly on my Macbook, so I can't even do it in there.

Give font creation in CorelDraw a look in Google. I can't imagine why they'd take that away.

Oh, and go for the plaid trilby! It'd work!

I think what you're looking for is at www.GoChords.com, where you enter your lyrics and then click and drag chord diagrams from a key table. Works for me.

lkdumas said:

I think what you're looking for is at www.GoChords, where you enter your lyrics and then click and drag chord diagrams from a key table. Works for me.

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I get a "domain not found" error on that site.

ichadwick said:

I get a "domain not found" error on that site.

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Add .com to the end.

Ian, have you looked at www.gochords.com, yet? It sounds like just what you (and I) have been looking for....