BETTER BY SUNDAY w/ PCO
MELODIES IN CHORDPRO | Ed Kerr
In the last issue, I shared with you about Most of us have sung “Cornerstone” at our sure. The good news is that Planning Center’s
how helpful I’ve found ChordPro to be within churches. Most of us have probably played the website gives you access to a popup menu
Planning hook from the original recording: that shows you all of this formatting. You can
Center
Online
Services.
Briefly,
ChordPro is a file format that lets you and I reach that menu from the “Chords and Lyrics”
format our chord charts clearly and transpose window of a song.
them to other keys while retaining the desired
formatting. Handy for sure! Check out that Though I can’t include this graphic of the music
article to read an introduction to how ChordPro notation in my ChordPro chart, I can include
works. pitch names. It’s as simple as putting the note
names within the same brackets I’ve used to
One of the frustrations I’ve had with chord enclose chord names. These brackets [ ]. So,
charts in general is that music notation can’t I can enter these pitches within brackets, like
be included without extra effort. These days this [F F E E D D C], and the result above verse
there are often instrumental lines (hooks) 1 of my chart will be:
Once you click the “Lyrics & Chords” button in
this window, you’ll be taken into the window
where you’ll do all of your work with ChordPro.
that are heard during intros and re-intros of
It looks like this:
worship songs. I found myself creating notation
in Finale, a music transcription program,
exporting a graphic of that notation, pasting it
into a graphics program along with a PDF of my If I want to do the song in a different key, like
chord chart, and then importing the resulting A major, check out how ChordPro transposes
PDF into Planning Center. Arggh! Way too these pitches:
Within this window you’ll see the Options
button with a small triangle to its right. Click on
much work, especially since some of the folks
that button and a menu showing a number of
on my team don’t read music anyway.
ChordPro
formatting
options will appear.
So, I explored options within ChordPro to help
present melodic ideas. Hmm. Turns out there’s
something that works really well. It doesn’t
allow me to create or attach music notation,
but I can have it present note names for me,
and the notes transpose to any key. It’s pretty
simple to do, too. Here’s how it works.
In my previous article I noted that in ChordPro
you can place text within brackets [ ] so that
There’s another tip I’d like to give you about Within those options
helping your ChordPro charts communicate you’ll see the codes
what you want. You can force text to appear for Bold text. You can
as bold if you surround it with some special click on that line and
characters. Basically, you enclose a lower- the code will appear
case b with < > symbols, like this before in your chart. Just
your text, and then follow it with . These type
characters turn bold formatting on and off. text between the brackets, replacing the word
So, type Instrumental notes: and the “Bold” you see enclosed there.
desired
resulting display will be:
Enter these characters above the pitches you Is there a learning curve involved here? Yes, but
entered earlier, and the start of your chart will this popup menu can help you remember the
look like this: codes. Once you’re comfortable with typing the
various brackets needed I think you’ll find this
they’re recognized as chords. Position these
feature very helpful in your preparation of charts
chord names along with the chord quality (add
for your team.
2, m, m7 etc) within brackets by the syllable
you want them to appear over and you’ll see
things align perfectly in any key. You can see Getting used to various types of brackets
chords aligned with syllables in the example needed for your work in ChordPro won’t take
above. you long. The payoff is worth the time, for
98
your
March 2019
Ed Kerr
Ed Kerr lives in Seattle with his family. He serves as
worship arts director at First Free Methodist Church,
teaches keyboards in Paul Baloche’s leadworship
workshops and is a clinician with Yamaha’s House
of Worship. He also manages the Yamaha Worship
Facebook group and invites you to join the group.
www.KerrTunes.com
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