Writing a chord chart

A song's Chart is written in barmark, a plain-text notation for the bar grid musicians already write on paper. This page covers what you need for a song here; the full user guide to the syntax, and a tutorial, live at barmark.dev. A chart the app can read lets Place from chart in Song settings › Sections put the sections on the recording with no AI, lets the app recognize the chart as this song's own when the stems are scanned, and gives the song check chords to compare against.

The first lines

Start with the key, the time signature and the tempo, one per line (key: D, time: 4/4, tempo: 120) or on one line with commas:

key: F#, time: 4/4, tempo: 132

The key is a root, plus m for minor or a mode word: F#, Em, D mixolydian. A bare root means major, so write F#, never F#maj. When the chart has no tempo or time signature, the app takes them from the song's settings; a tempo: in the chart wins over the song's. A key:, time: or tempo: line further down applies from the next bar on. A slowing or quickening is written the way players say it: tempo: rit. (or tempo: rit. to 90, tempo: accel.) runs from the next bar until the next tempo: line or the end of the chart, and tempo: a tempo returns to the steady tempo. The app keeps counting bars at the steady tempo through a ritardando, so a section marker inside one may need placing by ear.

Title and sections

One # line is the title, and each ## line starts a section that runs until the next one. Name sections whatever you like; a numeral is fine too.

# Letter Lands

## Intro
| F#5(7) Esus4 | x4

## II - Verse
| F#5(7) Esus4 | x8

Bars

A line of bars starts and ends with a pipe, and each space between pipes is one bar. Four bars to a line reads well, but line length means nothing. An empty bar (| |) is an error: fill it with one of the symbols below.

Two or more chords in a bar share it equally: in 4/4, | D A | is two beats each. A / holds the chord before it for one more slot, so | A / / G | is A for three beats and G on four. Three slots in 4/4 are thirds of the bar, and the readout warns about them. Join chords with _ to squeeze a quick run into one slot: | D / / D_E_F#m | plays all three inside beat four.

| D | A | Bm | G |
| D A | G D | A / / G | D / / D_E_F#m |

Symbols inside a bar

• % alone in a bar plays the previous bar again, exactly: | C G | % | is C, G, C, G.
• / holds whatever was sounding: | C G | / | lets G ring through the second bar.
• -- is silence: the whole band stops. A stop-time hit is | G -- -- -- |.
• N.C. is no chord: the chord instruments drop out while the drums, a riff or a voice carry on.
• ? is a chord you have not worked out yet. It is allowed, and always warned about, so no gap goes unnoticed.
• ... alone in a bar is a fermata: the last chord rings on. It is not counted as a bar.

| G | A | D | ... |
| N.C. | N.C. | A | ? |

A bar in another meter

A time signature in square brackets at the start of a bar sets the meter for that bar alone; to change it for good, write a time: line.

| D | A | [2/4] G | D |

Repeats

• x4 after a line's closing pipe plays the line four times.
• ## Chorus x2 plays the whole section twice.
• |: at the start of a line and :| at the end of one (in the same section) play the bars between them twice, or :| x3 three times.
• x ... is an open repeat: a vamp until the cue, or a fade-out at the end.

## Chorus
|: D | A |
| Bm | G :|
| E7 | / | x ...
| A | ... |

This chorus plays its four bars twice, vamps on E7 until the cue and ends on a ringing A.

The form of the song

Write each section once, then list the headings in the order the band plays them. A ## heading with no bars under it plays that section again.

## Verse
| A | D | E | A | x4

## Chorus
| G | / | A | / |

## Verse
## Chorus
## Verse x2

Capitals do not matter, but the rest of the name must match: ## Verse 2 is a new section, not a replay of ## Verse, and an empty heading that names no earlier section is an error. Lyrics under a replay heading are fine.

Chord symbols

• A capital letter, an optional # or b, and a quality: C, Cm, C7, Cmaj7, Cm7, Cdim, Caug, C6, C9, C13
• sus2 or sus4 after the rest: Csus4, C7sus4
• A bass note after a slash: C/E
• Tones in parentheses are added exactly, as Logic reads them: C(9) is C, E, G and D; Cm7(b5) is half-diminished
• 5 means no third: C5 is C and G, C5(7) is C, G and B♭

C2 and C4 are refused (players read them two ways); write Csus2 or C(9).

Lyrics and notes

Any other line is text: lyrics, cues, a reminder about the ending. It stays in the chart but is never played or scanned for chords.

## Bridge
Watch Kevin for the cutoff
| Em7 | A7(b9) | Dmaj7 | Bm7 |

When something will not read

A line the app cannot read is shown underlined, with its message, and left out of what plays; the rest of the chart still reads. The readout under the chart lists what was read (the bars, the sections and the song's length) and any warnings, each with its line number.

A worked example

key: A, time: 3/4, tempo: 224

## Intro
| A | D | E | A |

## Verse
| A | D | E | A | x4

## Chorus
| G | % | % | % |
| A | % | % | % |

## Verse
## Chorus

key: B
## Outro
| B | E | F# | B | x2
| B | ... |

The readout shows 61 bars in 6 sections: an intro of 4, a verse of 16, a chorus of 8, the verse and chorus again, and an outro of 9 in B; the fermata adds no bar.

If you wrote charts before

Charts in the app's earlier notation were converted where that was safe. If you know the old way: Chorus: or [Bridge] is now ## Chorus; an empty bar is now /; a lone / that repeated the last bar is now %; key: D · 4/4 · 120 bpm is now key: D, time: 4/4, tempo: 120; and a Structure line is now a list of ## headings. N.C. now means only that the chords stop; for the whole band stopping, write --.

For the editor itself, notation uploads and earlier versions, see Charts, lyrics and notes.

The standard

barmark is an open notation, not this app's alone. Its home is barmark.dev: the user guide to the syntax, a tutorial, and the renderer that draws your chart here. The grammar itself and the tools live at github.com/kevinpeckham/barmark.