Creating a new song file has been greatly simplified in the recent releases of Songsheet Generator. The "New Song File" menu option will automatically create a new ChordPro song file in the songs folder, with a unique filename, and then open it in the text editor. A song template is copied into the new song file, to provides the basic framework for creating a ChordPro song file.
Creating a new song file manually is as simple as creating a new text document, and adding a few special mark-up tags (directives and chords) to the text. Directives are enclosed in curly braces ('{' and '}'); chords are enclosed in square brackets ('[' and ']'). Songsheet Generator uses these directives and chords to automatically format songs for printing or presentation.
Creating and saving a text file in Windows usually results in a file with an extension of ".txt". Songsheet Generator does not pay attention to filename extensions, though; it will scan through all files in the songs path, looking for files which contain title directives.
The single essential directive to make a song file is the title. This indicates to Songsheet Generator that the file contains a song:
{title:Twinkle Twinkle}
Next some lyrics with chords can be added to the file. Chords are inserted in the lyrics where the chords change. Songsheet Generator will automatically put the chord above the letter that the chord appears before. So the following lyric:
[C]Twinkle, twinkle, [F]little [C]star,
Will be automatically formatted to look something like this:
C F C Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
Songsheet Generator will never allow chords to overlap in the output; so chords which appear one right after the other, as in this example:
[A]What are [F#m]you[E][C#]
Will be automatically spaced apart in the output:
A F#m E C# What are you
Comments are noted with the comment directive. Comments may show copyright information, or call out a chorus, or give instructions for singing a song, such as "repeat 2x":
{comment:(repeat 2x)}
The start_of_chorus and end_of_chorus directives mark the chorus, or refrain, of a song. Songsheet Generator can apply a special marking to the chorus, to make it easy for performers or singers to locate:
{start_of_chorus}
[C]Little, [F]little, [C]little [G7]star,
[C]Up a[F]bove the [C]clouds so [G7]far,
{end_of_chorus}
See the example song file for a complete song.
See the ChordPro file format reference for the complete list of directives supported by Songsheet Generator.
See the file encoding topic for information about character encoding in Songsheet Generator.