Do you write out and keep chord charts to songs?

UkeKiddinMe

UkeKiddinMe

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I have come across musicians in life who just keep everything in their head and never really write anything down.

I'm not one of those. :) I need to write stuff down.

I have been collecting chord charts for songs I like since I started playing last month, and I'm up to a nice 35 charts in my book.

Do you write out and keep chord charts to songs?
 
It's a good idea with anything new. When I started my career, what ever I needed to remember, I would write notes about it. When recalling is needed, I would visualize what I wrote and didn't need to find my notes. It worked for me.
As far as uke stuff, yeah I have songs with lyrics and chords and refer to them as needed. Find a uke fret stamp so you can mark finger positions or use the number system.
Whatever works for you..............Bo.........
 
I usaually don't write anything Down when I do a cover of a James hill song or something like that but when I try to arrange a song myself i usually tab it out so I don't forget
 
I never used to, but then I would think "I want to play this song" and totally forget the chords all together so I started to write em down just a week ago haha
 
I write out words and chords to songs. I then try to learn them. If I'm going to sing a song 'out', I like to be able to sing without having to look at the words. I don't always succeed, but that's my aim. Some songs I learn quite quickly but others take a long time, often many months.
 
808boy said:
Find a uke fret stamp...
Click to expand...

Holy crap! I have never even heard of these being manufactured, but I am super stoked to know that they exist! (Sorry, noob moment.)

Anyways, I have always kept a notebook/folder of tabs/chords for songs I like. Even if I don't always use the to play, they are useful for passing along to friends.
 
I used to type them up on the computer - I have probably a couple hundred by now. I've gradually started trying to tweak them a bit for readability on my iPad.

John
 
OldePhart said:
I used to type them up on the computer - I have probably a couple hundred by now. I've gradually started trying to tweak them a bit for readability on my iPad.

John
Click to expand...

I use a 14pt sans serif font and save to PDF in Dropbox on my Linux PC. Works fine on the iPad. It's also OK on a cheap Android tablet I keep upstairs for doing You Tube videos.
 
I usually type 'em out on Word and print em when I need em. I'll usually convert to PDF for easier download.
 
I have to have some kind of copy of songs kept somewhere so I don't forget. When I first started playing guitar years ago I tended to forget things easily so things I learned even sometimes as little as a couple months previously became hard to play. If I wanted to play those songs, well then I had to go back and look it up to remind myself what the chords were. I'm a lot better than I used to be with the chords now, and I think my muscle memory "capacity" for learning the chord progressions has really increased in time as well.

Now lyrics, there's a whole different ballgame. I can't remember those to save my life, ever. I'm not even confident that I could play more than maybe a small handful of songs on guitar or ukulele and actually remember all the verses... Which is the beauty of my ipad. I download tabs directly to it, I can even write tabs on it if I want, and I can look up lyrics for any song I ever want.
 
Tootler said:
I use a 14pt sans serif font and save to PDF in Dropbox on my Linux PC. Works fine on the iPad. It's also OK on a cheap Android tablet I keep upstairs for doing You Tube videos.
Click to expand...

I use PDFs for my bass charts - I have developed my own "notation" loosely based on Nashville numbering that works great for that. My vision is very bad so I try to have the chord changes and timing hashes in 16 or 18pt font - with lyrics at around 10pt 'cause those don't really matter for me most of the time on the bass "gig."

For folks stuff with the uke I've always preferred my chords inline set off with brackets - very close to what has become the text markup for ChordPro and, therefore, OnSong on the iPad. Therefore, tweaking those files for OnSong is usually just a matter of adding parens inside the chord brackets (otherwise, when displayed inline, OnSong displays the chords without setting them off from the lyrics other than by color) and sometimes tweaking line lengths so I can keep the font at 16 to 18 point (my near to mid vision is a shambles, these days).

John
 
I memorize stuff, usually from sheets, marked up as needed.

I rarely use sheets during "practice." I try to only use them when I'm actively working on learning a song.
 
the more songs you accumalate, the more you will forget....well I do....and it's always nice to have a reference to do so on hand...as time goes on... it's a good thing...
we all get older soon and it might come in handy...plus if your friends want a song, you can photo copy it in an instant....
 
UkeKiddinMe said:
Do you write out and keep chord charts to songs?
Click to expand...

Yes, my memory is bad, so I create a PDF with the chords and lyrics for any song I might want to refer to. I generally don't print the PDFs--I play using my laptop screen, so I make sure the whole thing fits on one page so I don't have to stop to scroll while I'm playing. The exception is fingerstyle/chord melodies that span more than one page. I print those out and put them in a binder.

I use a private Wordpress blog to organize my collection. For each song, I create a post where I upload the PDF and add relevant reminders, such as notes about a strum pattern. I also include links to anything else that is related to the song, such as a performance I like or a tutorial if I used one. When I want to play a now-forgotten song that I "memorized" a year ago, it's easy to find on the blog.
 
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