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Summary:

Is there a way to display chord symbols in music players (software apps) ? Like .srt files for movie subtitles or .lrc for music lyrics, isn't there a format or alternative for chords ?

Details & Usage:

Lyrics / subtitles support is now common in media players (.srt and .lrc file formats). Knowing this, for a pop song I know well, I could make my own lyrics file with say just Chord Symbols and the first few lyrics of verses + chorus and notes so I can play along / sing / rehearse with the song playing.

But is there a better (ideally standard + well supported) way to do this, to display both the lyrics and chords ? Even better, an existing format / resource to get these for free / less work ? A lot of players already have a download lyrics function built-in, so it's almost seamless.

So, does it exist already, or I'm day-dreaming ?

This is more of a question of memory helping tools rather than finding the chords & structure (which are easy once you know the key and song a bit).

Related Info:

Dom
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deryb
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  • It's not clear to me just what this has to do with either music practice or music theory – Brian Towers Mar 08 '21 at 17:44
  • @BrianTowers What OP describes would give a convenient way to combine backing tracks and chord sheets into one digital object. It could be very useful for practice or livestreamed performances. – Edward Mar 08 '21 at 18:11
  • @BrianTowers I just added more details. Please read the whole question, I did provide enough background info I think. But feel free to suggest anything missing to make it clearer. – deryb Mar 09 '21 at 20:43
  • @Tim Of course it's not that hard (for someone well-trained with a good ear, like I mentioned), but it's time consuming, and it's a memory helper. Say I just want to play & sing along a few lesser known songs, have fun & not waste time, this is a definite must, no ? – deryb Mar 09 '21 at 20:44
  • @Tim sorry, but why are you trying to convince me to find things by ear? I just said I have a good ear, matter of fact I have a great one, I used to find guitar solos by ear when I was learning as a teenager. If don't want to help with my original question, please stop. – deryb Mar 11 '21 at 02:31
  • Why only chord symbols, why not melody too so you could sing it correctly without rehearsing or play along like instrumental karaoke? IMO there aren't even decent tools and storage/exchange formats for writing chord charts or chords+lyrics charts, let alone having these synchronized to audio. The best thing I know is RTF or maybe Word documents or plain TXT. And pen+paper is even better. Anything with a more music-oriented data/object model gets awkward or just Wrong. C Am F G. I wrote that in 1.5 seconds. This message editor beats every notation application out there, and I have them all. – piiperi Reinstate Monica Mar 11 '21 at 08:06
  • @piiperiReinstateMonica I'm sorry if I offended you. My question was marked off topic, I don't understand why. Can anyone help please ? This question is important to me and I'd like to improve my music practice as much as possible. – deryb Mar 14 '21 at 12:51
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    The question is off-topic because it's asking for a software recommendation. See [What topics can I ask about here?](https://music.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). Also, I suggest https://music.stackexchange.com/conduct: "Avoid sarcasm and be careful with jokes — tone is hard to decipher online." (It's best not to anger the gods: "Updated to attempt to please the evil "off-topic" police / gods.") – Aaron Mar 14 '21 at 14:56
  • Ok, thanks for the details. But nowhere am I asking for a specific software application. Rather, I'm asking for a software WAY, which is meant to find out if there is any common file format, extension or existing technology to display chords and lyrics. I don't want to get too geekish, of course I could avoid the word "software" altogether if that's what it takes to avoid the "off-topic police". Please help me rephrase my question if possible, to help find if anything's out there to help my quest. – deryb Mar 14 '21 at 21:11
  • @Aaron Thanks, I did rephrase my question a bit, to avoid the "please recommend software ..." types of question. And right, sarcasm is rarely a good idea in text online, point noted. Feel free to suggest further edits. – deryb Mar 15 '21 at 01:08
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    I think your edits helped. No guarantees, because the question is an uneasy fit overall for the site, but at least IMO it meets the "good enough" standard. BTW, the Wikipedia page you found is just about using ASCII files to display chord/lyrics charts. It's not the kind of file format standard you're looking for. – Aaron Mar 15 '21 at 01:18
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    I still feel that this question is too much of an edge case, so I'll let the community decide if it should be reopened. In the meantime, have you considered other computer, software, or audio engineering Stack Exchange communities? – Richard Mar 18 '21 at 02:33
  • @Richard I thought since Music was the main topic here, and there's probably lots of other music geeks out there. It's sad to consider my question was immediately closed, [another one quite similar](https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/58411/what-is-the-name-for-this-kind-of-chord-chart?rq=1) hasn't. No one can talk of software or computer tools here to help a fellow musician ? I feel discouraged. I'll add just a bit more background, hoping it might get more sympathy. – deryb Mar 18 '21 at 14:35
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    @deryb Music practice and theory is our main topic, but we do have a scope we follow. Both external resources requests and software recommendations are off-topic here and the question seems to have a bit of both I.E. "Even better, an existing format / resource to get these for free / less work ?". The edits I do not feel like have resolved them yet. I will also point out while the other linked question leans into software recs a bit, the core question is terminology of a notation which is very much on topic. – Dom Mar 18 '21 at 15:15
  • There's a site called Chordify which augments audio/video media (which has a timeline) with time-stamped chord charts (which can be at least partly auto-generated, I supposed), basically synchronizing/aligning two pieces of time-stamped media, and they have an editor for chord symbols + measure structure. The chord chart is media too. Is that what you want, but just a bit different, or completely different? Are the differences functional or non-functional? Non-functional meaning, has to be in my own control, no proprietary stuff, work offline on the desktop, etc. – piiperi Reinstate Monica Mar 18 '21 at 15:28

1 Answers1

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I hope I read the original question correctly. If not, my answer will make no sense and I apologize. It seems to ask how simple lead sheets can include chords (graphics? or must names?)

Not having specialized programs to display lead sheets, I make my own standard.

I ripped lyrics to favorite songs from the internet and imported them into Notepad. (Other word processors would also work but Notepad and Wordpad come free with Windows. Any text processor would do as well.)

I then inserted chord names (enclosed in brackets to distinguish them from the lyrics) into the text.

Presto! Sheets of lyrics and chords (and playing advice) I can page through as I play and sing.

for example:

{G} Lyric lyric lyric lyric lyric {Am} lyric lyric lyric {C} lyric lyric lyric {D} lyric lyric lyric {C} lyric lyric lyric lyric lyric {slow the rhythm} lyric lyric

No specialized software needed and extremely small file size.

Larry
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  • Thanks! That's what I imagined as well. I'm just wondering if there isn't a standard (file format / document type) to have both lyrics and chords separate so for example, I could make the font size real big for chords and perhaps to avoid displacing lyrics too much. – deryb Mar 12 '21 at 21:50