Chord Charter

by Paul Nahay, paul@broadway-performance-systems.com

Introduction

Chord Charter is a Java program that generates formatted musical chord charts, from raw input text provided by the user.

Produces formatted HTML output, which may be saved to an HTML file (i.e., a file with an .htm or .html extension) and published to a Web site, emailed to other musicians, etc.
Supports all standard musical chord symbols.
Automatically calculates and generates bar numbers, to the left of each musical system.
Gives the user exact control over transposition. For example, when a chart originally in F Major is transposed up by a half step, the user can specify whether the result should be in F# Major or Gb Major.
The HTML it produces validates correctly at validator.w3.org, and should render properly in any modern, standards-compliant browser.
The input it requires may be created in any text editor and imported or pasted in, or may be created and edited in the program itself.
Displays the HTML it generates in the user's default browser, for immediate feedback during editing.

Instructions

1. Run the program.

You will need to have Java 6 installed on your machine. If you don't, you may download and install it for free by clicking here.

Click the "Chord Charter" link at the top of this page to download the Chord Charter program, and either:

OPEN the ChordCharter.jar file directly, or
SAVE the ChordCharter.jar file to your computer, then open the saved file.

2. Optionally, run the demo.

If you want to quickly see what Chord Charter does, just press the Demo button at the bottom right. This will do three things:

Paste the "Star-Spangled Banner" sample input text into the upper text area.
Generate HTML output in the lower text area.
Open the generated HTML output in your system's default browser, for immediate viewing.

3. Enter your original chord chart data into the upper text area.

You may type or paste existing text into the upper text area. Sample data is available to examine or use as a starting point. You may also open an existing text file by pressing the Open Text File button.

4. Generate the HTML.

Press the Generate HTML button. If the input is valid, then the lower text area is filled with the generated HTML data, which may then be copied and pasted into an .htm or .html file. If your input has any errors, the lower text area turns red, and the invalid line and character numbers are displayed, along with the text that the program doesn't understand.

5. Open the generated HTML in your default browser.

Press the Open in Browser button. This will open your default browser with the generated HTML, so you may see the final result. If you know how to manipulate HTML, you may edit the data in the lower text area, and press this button again, to tweak the output. Alternatively, you may press Generate HTML and Open in Browser instead of Steps 4 and 5 above. This has the same effect as pressing the Generate HTML and Open in Browser buttons.

6. Save the generated HTML.

You may save the generated HTML directly to a file by pressing the Save HTML to File button. NOTE: While you may be tempted to save the data from your browser, this is not advisable, as browsers usually alter HTML before saving it, and the HTML so saved is very unlikely to be 100% valid.

7. Quit the program.

Press the Exit button to quit the program.

Input Text

The following describes the data you may enter into the upper text area. Carriage returns in the text are respected, thus bars entered on the same line in the input text will be displayed on the same line in the HTML output.

Chords:

Enter standard chord symbols, such as C, fm7, E+, gm, Dbm7-5, Bdim7.
Lowercase letter names (e.g., gm for "g minor") are acceptable in the input text, and will be capitalized in the output.
Accidentals are bb (double flat), b (flat), # (sharp), and x or X (double sharp).
Inversions (i.e., "chord over bass") may be indicated via a slash character, such as D7/F#, i.e., a D7 chord with F# in the bass.
Chord symbols must not contain any spaces, so AbMaj7 is valid, Ab Maj7 is not.

Rests:

Rests are indicated in the input text by the letters R or r.
Rests are displayed in the HTML output as the "registered" symbol: ®.

Meter Signatures:

Meter signatures may be added to any bar, and are simply notated as a fraction, using the slash character.
Some example meter signatures are: 4/4, 6/8, 3/2, 5/16.
Meter signatures are rendered in the HTML as a numerator over a denominator, without the slash character.

Barlines:

Barlines are indicated by the "pipe" vertical line character, together with an optional colon character. The following characters are recognized:

| Standard barline.
|| Double barline.
:|| End Repeat barline.
||: Begin Repeat barline.
:||: End Repeat and Begin Repeat barline.
||| End barline. Indicated in the data as three "pipe" characters, but is displayed in the HTML output as a double barline.

Attributes:

Attributes are optional information. Any or all attributes may be included or omitted.
Attributes are name:value pairs, surrounded by brackets ([ and ]), with a colon (:) separating the name and the value.
There may not be any line breaks within the brackets.
Except for the [section], [bar-left], [bar-center], and [bar-right] attributes, attributes may be placed anywhere in the input text.
Except for the [subtitle] attribute, if an attribute appears more than once, only the last occurrence is used.
Attributes that contain text values (as opposed to numbers) may contain transposable notes, which are identified by braces (which must "tightly" surround the note), e.g.:
[title: Air on the G String (in {D} Major)]
In this case, if a transposition is applied, the "G" in "G String" is not transposed, while the "D" in "D Major" is. Whether transposed or not, the braces surrounding the note ("D" in this example) will not be displayed in the HTML output.

Attribute Example	Explanation
`[title: Happy Talk]`	Indicates the title of the chord chart, which will be centered at the top of the output.
`[subtitle: From "South Pacific"]`	Indicates one of possibly multiple subtitles, each of which appears on its own line in the output, centered beneath the title.
`[composer: Richard Rodgers]`	Indicates the composer. Is rendered at the top right of the output.
`[author: Oscar Hammerstein]`	Indicates the author or lyricist. Is rendered at the top left of the output.
`[copyright: Copyright 1949 by Rodgers and Hammerstein]`	The copyright notice. Is rendered centered at the bottom of the output.
`[first-bar-number: 1]`	The number of the first bar of the chord chart. If absent, then numbering starts with bar 1. If the music starts with a pickup bar, this value should be set to 0, so that the first full bar becomes bar number 1.
`[show-bar-numbers: false]`	Determines if bar numbers are to be displayed at all. Valid values are `true` (the default) and `false`.
`[show-sections: false]`	Determines if section headings are to be displayed at all. Valid values are `true` (the default) and `false`.
`[section: Verse 2]`	Defines a named section of music, which starts with a particular bar. It must be placed within the appropriate bar. Is rendered as boxed text above the bar.
`[fifths-transposition: 0]` Transpose by	The number of fifths by which to transpose the entire chord chart. The default is 0. Transpositions are expressed in fifths, rather than semitones, because semitone transpositions of musical spellings are ambiguous (since multiple enharmonic spellings exist for each pitch class). For example, transposing C up by 1 semitone could result in either C# or Db. However, transposing C up by 7 fifths results in C#, whereas transposing C down by 5 fifths results in Db. You may use the dropdown list at the left to translate a desired musical interval into the number of fifths to enter in the attribute.
`[chord-font-size: 12]`	The font size of the chord symbols, in points. The default is 12.
`[line-spacing: 10]`	The vertical space between the musical systems, in pixels. The default is 0 (i.e., the systems are as close together as possible).
`[bar-left: (Piano enters)]` `[bar-center: Fermata]` `[bar-right: "Oklahoma..."]`	Provides an "annotation" for the bar, which appears either left-justified, centered, or right-justified above the bar, according to the attribute name. May be used for performance directions, lyric cues, etc. It must be placed within the appropriate bar. If more than one is present within a bar, only the last one is recognized.

Comments:

Any part of the input text may be surrounded by the C-style multi-line block comment delimiters, /* and */. These delimiters and the text between them are ignored by the program. This is particularly useful for temporarily hiding portions of the input text from the program, without having to actually cut the text out. Nested comments are not recognized. Thus, if the input text contains
/* A /* B */ C */
only
/* A /* B */
gets commented out. The program will attempt to interpret
C */
and will recognize the chord
C
and then fail when it encounters the final
*/