GUITAR SONGBOOK WIZARD - Generate beautiful Guitar Chord-sheets Online


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Guitar Songbook Wizard - Documentation

The documentation is currently under development. Please check out the examples in the meantime to find out more details about the Songbook Wizard syntax. Large portions of this documentation have been kindly provided by Stephen Peringer. Thanks!

1. Introduction

The Songbook Wizard is a website that helps you quickly create beautiful, easy-to-read guitar songsheets including standard chord diagrams without doing any formatting yourself. You just tell the Songbook Wizard the information about your song, and it will produce an Adobe PDF document with the click of one button. The following sections outline the simple method for giving the song information to Songbook Wizard in a way it will understand.

2. Structure of a Songbook Wizard input file

A Songbook Wizard input file consists of three parts: header, chords, and lyrics. Each part is separated form the next one by a blank line. Each part will be described in detail in the sections 2.1-2.3 below. Let's take a look at a complete SBW input file, the song 1992 from Blur:

title = 1992
artist = Blur
subtitle = 13 (1999)

Am,x02210
A(sus2),x02200
D,xx0232
F#m,b44bbb,2
G#m,4,b33bbb,1
Bm,xb443b,2
F,b332bb,1

Intro:
[Am][A(sus2)]

Verse One:
[Am]Going into [D]business, [F#m]an agreement of [D]your bombast.
[G#m]You'd love my bed, [Bm]you took the other in[D]stead [F]

Verse Two:
[Am]But don't you [D]feel low? [F#m]I was being [D]oblique.
[G#m]You'd love my bed, [Bm]you got the other in[D]stead [F]

Verse Three:
[Am]What do you [D]owe me? [F#m]The price of your [D]peace of mind.
[G#m]You'd love my bed, [Bm]you took it all in[D]stead [F]

2.1 Header

title = 1992
artist = Blur
subtitle = From the 1999 album 13

This is the header section from the above example. The three variables are title, artist and subtitle. Each variable must appear on its own line. No matter what order the variables are entered, they will appear in the PDF file in the order, title, artist, subtitle. The subtitle can be omitted.

2.2 Chords

Am,x02210
A(sus2),x02200
D,xx0232
F#m,b44bbb,2
G#m,4,b33bbb,1
Bm,xb443b,2
F,b332bb,1

The chords section is where you give the wizard the data it needs to produce chord diagrams for your PDF. Each line describes the chord shapes required in the song. There are up to four variables per line (that is, per chord), all separated by commas. The four variables are the chord name, base fret, notes, and barre position. This is how to write the variables in each line:

2.3 Lyrics

Intro:
[Am][A(sus2)]

Verse One:
[Am]Going into [D]business, [F#m]an agreement of [D]your bombast.
[G#m]You'd love my bed, [Bm]you took the other in[D]stead [F]

Verse Two:
[Am]But don't you [D]feel low? [F#m]I was being [D]oblique.
[G#m]You'd love my bed, [Bm]you got the other in[D]stead [F]

Verse Three:
[Am]What do you [D]owe me? [F#m]The price of your [D]peace of mind.
[G#m]You'd love my bed, [Bm]you took it all in[D]stead [F]

Sections like "Intro" and "Verse" are lines ending with a semicolon (:). These lines appear in the PDF as section titles in italics to the left of the indented lyrics. The chord names that you would like printed above the lyrics should be written in [square brackets]. The chord names in square brackets will appear immediately above whatever text follows them. All other text in the lyrics section will appear exactly as printed, including line breaks. NOTE: If you have chords with no lyrics, as in the Intro section in the example, an empty line will be inserted. This means you do not need to insert a line break before the next section to keep a consistent look.

3. Final Remarks