Different ways of notating songs for reference/sharing/songbooks

Community Hub General Questions (not lesson specific)
1

There’s plenty of discussion already related to ChordPro and software for creating songbooks in that format. There are quite a few other ways to write songsheets. Chordpro format essentially takes one of those variations (chords written in brackets inline with the text just before the chord change) and makes it look prettier. I’ve seen other variations. For example, a ukulele group in San Jose, California addresses one of my complaints about songbooks not containing any beat/rhythm information by putting dots after the chord names to indicate how many beats per measure.

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Most of the variations on songsheets are attempts to address various limitations on the style. I do appreciate the efforts here because some of them are notable improvements.

I encountered a different way of notating songs today and figured I could use this spot to share it and maybe some others folks might come up with.

I found the site chordsheet.com today which looks like a really handy way of making reference sheets for chord progressions in songs.

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There’s a lot of musical notation bits and pieces that it uses so you can fit entire songs onto a single sheet of paper, and some of this stuff makes it a lot easier to convey some rhythmic concepts that can be pretty important. “Pushed” chord changes being one. This notation definitely de-emphasizes the lyrics. It seems that they recommend putting the lyrics on a separate page (or maybe a separate column) if you need them.

The Nashville Number System is another. Most folks are probably at least a little bit familiar with some of the early basics. But the whole thing is quite complex and I don’t think any one website covers all of it. This one is pretty thorough. There’s a guy who sells a book about it. Maybe that one is totally complete with all the components of it beyond just the chord numbers?

I’m not exactly thrilled with this system because there’s a strong learning curve to it, right? The big one, clearly, is that you have to be able to quickly come up with all the chords within any given key. The other aspect to the learning curve is that there are all kinds of extra notations involved, too. Some are the same as standard music notation (if you’ve ever learned that) but not all of them are. Some are unique to this system. Maybe I will grow to like it more as I become a more experienced musician? But as a beginner, I don’t like it.

I encountered a different type of notation at the ukulele festival I attended. It’s similar to the usual songsheets that are widely shared but it uses these boxes to break everything up. I find it difficult to follow these because you have to jump around to follow the flow of the song. It does (or at least can) address the lack of rhythm in usual songsheets.

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I don’t know where this comes from or who came up with it, but I don’t like it. It can get really messy pretty quickly.

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What else have you encountered? Do you like it or not?

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I’ve gone to using Chordpro format and SongbookPro to manage my music rather than tabs. It’s fine for most things as I can put text notes at the top of a song for strum pattern, or in the body for other things, it has the rhythm, etc. But it’s not great for fingerpicking songs. That gets a bit messier.

The biggest downside is SongbookPro is no longer maintained. Another user here created Fretlist, but beyond some initial playing with it I haven’t tested it out.

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SBP not maintained? Seems the developer does a pretty consistent twice-per-year update frequency. It’s not frequent, but it’s regular. There was an update maybe a few months ago. I will say that I’m unhappy about SBP not addressing its limited chord library. Even after submitting many requests to address this.

I’ve been keeping up with fretlist and it’s recently reached a point that it fulfills most of my needs for guitar playing. The developer has built in a number of “extra” features so in some respects it surpasses what many other apps can do. I found out about chordsheet.com from fretlist’s most recent update which incorporated a few features from there.

But many of these notation systems are not always replacements for what chordpro and the various apps do. The Nashville system, in particular, came about due to the specific needs of session musicians in Nashville’s music scene. The chordsheet.com system also sort of addresses some specific needs. And of course, everybody has their own preferences so options are good.

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I thought I had seen it mentioned on Reddit that the developer had stopped updating it. I’d love to see it continue to be maintained. The last release (per release notes) was October 2025, so we’ll see.

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Maybe he didn’t update the release notes for the last update, but there was definitely one this year.

With that update, it started showing a red comment near tabs that “tab is not transposed” so I know something changed. and fwiw, fretlist transposes tabs when you change the key of a song.

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I use a note taking app on my iPad with a “pencil”. It’s just like using a pencil and paper, so very natural and flexible. I have a “notebook” where each page is a song:

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Currently the notebook has about 25 pages. The app creates an alphabetized table of contents so a song is easy to find.

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Being a virtual pencil and paper it’s easy to add any kind of notes:

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BTW, I enjoy breaking a song down into chunks, then assembling them into a complete song, like I did for Dead Flowers above. This reduces the amount you need to memorize.

The app (Noteful) stores its notebooks in the cloud so I can get to them with my iPhone as well.

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looks like chordsheet.com basically digitized what you write out. Minus the tab part, though.

Where did you learn that system? It’s a method that I had never quite encountered. Thinking about it, though, I suppose my guitar instructor was doing something similar - albeit beginner-ized for me.

Instead of just writing the chord names, he was doing it with chord diagram sheets like this.

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He would start with blank ones and draw the chords on in the progression for the song, noting repeats, split measures, embellishments, and whatnot.

Now that fretlist can incorporate aspects of this type of notation, I am working on including it in my songsheets. Still experimenting with how I can blend this with lyrics in a songsheet because I find the lyrics helpful to track progress through a song (whether I am singing or not).

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Exactly what I teach the students as well, 4x4 grids fit for the most songs :smiley:

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I did this one below just the other day to recall a song I hadn’t played in ages - I use this method to re-figure out the chords by ear of songs I had learnt and forgot.

I find myself using it oftener, although Iike Nate I somehow rely on the lyrics as well…for another song I started learning last week I just heard the 123456 repetitive pattern and the grids was all I needed. It comes way easier when you use grids to hear the chord that comes next.

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Btw only one wrong F in place of Am - the /chords I added later while checking the song tab on JG website.

@roger_holland which song is this? A little hint: you inspired me to revisit it :smiling_face:

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That’s my method too. I try to keep it simple - just enough to remind me when to change, rather than attempting to capture all the detail.

EDIT: But I use a paper notebook.

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A lot of these examples seem to be missing a time signature. :thinking:

Most jazz musos will either be using a Real/Fake Book, or else iReal Pro, which is a brilliant little program.

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If you’re writing it out yourself, you can write a time signature if you want it.

But on the program side, all of the ones I’ve looked at in any detail allow you to include that information.

But also worth noting - there are quite a few “campfire strum” type groups who don’t care what the time signature is. they just play everything in 4/4 in order to be more approachable for beginners. can be irritating when a lot of traditional local stuff is in something else (LOTS of local traditional stuff in 3/4 time where I live). but it’s a choice they make.

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When I took up guitar about 9 years ago, a friend recommended a teacher. At the first lesson he asked what song do I want to play. He called up the song on YouTube, listened to it, pulled out a clean sheet of paper, queued the song again, and for most songs, wrote the chords down (following this format) as he listened to the song. I took lessons with him for about 2 years and I was always amazed at his ability to transcribe a new song at every lesson. I also now have chord charts of my favorite songs!

For a beginner, what’s good about this format is that you can concentrate on the rhythm as you read the chart and play along with the recording. Keep your strumming hand moving, and think 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4. Keep the lyrics and melody secondary to your focus on the rhythm.

When I look up chords for a song it’s almost always shown as lyrics with chords above the words. I’m glad to see others in this thread like the chord chart format too.

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I learned piano for a while from a session player who did a lot of work with musos around Australia. He’d also do this, only he didn’t need two goes at it - he’d bring it up on YouTube and write out the chords, then sit down at the piano and play it through. I’m still in awe of that sort of musical ability.

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I was using paper too. I also used to keep a small notebook in my pocket for non-music stuff.

I started reading stories about note taking apps that kids today use to take class notes, so I wondered what it would take for me to give up paper and pencil.

Chord charts seemed like a perfect test for my paper to iPad transition. Awkward at first, but I stayed with the iPad. I learned tips and tricks along the way and it has become more natural. Given all of the advantages of digital ink, I could never go back to paper. (Though I still use paper to doodling and jotting down new ideas).

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This is the sort of thing my last instructor would give me to work on a song. Some of the ones he wrote out for me got REALLY messy/cluttered with the way he would write picking patterns and chord embellishments

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He would also transcribe these out for me at each lesson. He’d pull up the song from his music collection or youtube or whatever on his laptop and write it out right there. He advocated strongly for me to get and learn to use the Transcribe! software so I could start learning to do this on my own.

While it was helpful to focus on just learning the guitar part in isolation, I find it at minimum doesn’t help and sometimes makes it more difficult to then take that guitar part and start playing with the recording. I feel like it’s really just one part of the process because you still have to sit down and plot out how the lyrics line up with the chord changes.

For my own purposes, I find that when I’m learning something new, I want more written down to describe what I’m playing and when. Then once I’ve learned what I’m doing, I can start to simplify things for reference purposes.

The full notation stuff is far too much for using later on, except maybe as a memory cue that I’m not really looking at while I play.

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But there’s certainly no doubt here what’s being played and how.

I’m still trying to find that balance between having enough information while also avoiding the complexity of too much when it comes to songsheets I use for reference purposes as well as for sharing. I suppose that’s always going to be a movable target depending on the song and the circumstances.

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What note taking apps do you recommend?
I keep meaning to start using one instead of doung paper. Then taking a picture to carry on my phone,:joy:

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looking into that app in more detail. It does look extremely handy. It can even build backing tracks for you? Very cool.

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I use Noteful on my iPad with an Apple Pencil. I don’t have neat handwriting, and initially it was worse using the pencil on the slick glass surface. Then I found this clear plastic film that has a little texture, and that little bit of friction made it easier to control the pencil.

Another tip is to use the zoom and pan liberally. Instead trying to draw tiny lines or text, zoom in and draw at a comfortable size.

Noteful has a lot of how to videos on YouTube, and Gemini/ChatGpt can answer questions too. I tried several other apps, and if I recall Noteful was one of the few that had a highly functional free version, and a reasonable one time purchase price of $7! Rare these days.

The one negative for me is that it does not have good tools for more structured drawing. I do a lot of building and it’s not very good for making “blueprint” like drawings.

Like guitar, it will take time and usage before you will feel comfortable with it.

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It’s the go-to app for jazz musicians. You can download a huge library with all the jazz standards, add instruments, change tempo and key, etc.

Good thing I looked at the site because they now have a linux version as well, so I have just loaded it onto my laptop.

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