Rendering options

ChordMark fully acknowledges the fact that when it comes to rendering a chord chart, there is no one size fits all and people's preferences might vary greatly, depending on how well they know a song, which instrument they play, or if they want to print the chord chart or not. People's preferences might also vary from song to song!

ChordMark has native support for many of the possible customizations. Those options are not written in the file itself, but are rendering options of the ChordMark software. To enjoy them, you need to use a ChordMark compatible editor such as Chord Chart Studio.

Choosing what to render

One of the greatest strength of ChordMark lies in its ability to render neatly aligned chord grids from a chord chart with lyrics. This is very useful for band members that do not need the lyrics. For example, Cole Porter's beautiful Everytime we say goodbye:

Can automatically be rendered:

You might even find it useful to have a quick reminder of the lyrics at the beginning of each section:

(Not) aligning chords and lyrics

Aligning chords symbols on top of the lyrics where they should be played is the usual way of rendering chord charts. But it's not the only one! Thanks to ChordMark automatic alignment of bars between lines, one might actually find it clearer NOT to align the chords symbols with the lyrics. This is especially true for jazz songs with a lot of chords and where the lyric placement is not always a reliable/practical indicator for the chords changes.

Compare:

With:

Or even:

There is no right or wrong, it really depends on how well you know the melody, how complex are the chords changes, and what do you prefer to focus on. One way might also print better than the other, especially if you use a multi columns layout and want to keep the lines as short as possible.

Choosing what to render​

(Not) aligning chords and lyrics​

Choosing what to render

(Not) aligning chords and lyrics