3.9 A lead sheet

In popular music, it is common to denote accompaniment as chord-names. Using them in LilyPond has two parts, just like lyrics: entering the chords (with \chords), and printing them (with \new ChordNames).

Chord names are entered by starting chords mode (with \chords). In chords mode, you can enter chords with a letter (indicating the root of the chord), and a durations following that:

       \chords { c2 f4. g8 }

The result of \chords is a list of chords, and is equivalent to entering chords with <...>.

Other chords can be created by adding modifiers, after a colon. The following example shows a few common modifiers:

       \chords { c2 f4:m g4:maj7 gis1:dim7 }

Printing chords is done by adding \context ChordNames before the chords thus entered:

      \context ChordNames \chords { c2 f4.:m g4.:maj7 gis8:dim7 }

When put together, chord names, lyrics and a melody form a lead sheet, for example,

     \score {
       <<
         \context ChordNames \chords { chords }
         \addlyrics
           \notes the melody
           \context Lyrics \lyrics { the text }
       >>
       \paper { }
     }

A complete list of modifiers, and other options for layout are in the reference manual section Chords.

This page is for LilyPond-2.0.3 (stable-branch). Report errors to <bug-lilypond@gnu.org>.