Printing chords of songs

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playtab is a Perl program that generates PostScript to print the chords of songs. The result is intended for musicians that want to accompany the song.

The input for playtab is plain ASCII. It contains the chords, the division in bars, with optional annotations.

An example:

    !t Blue Bossa

    Bossanova
    =
    | c-9 ... | f-9 ... | d% . g7 . | c-9 ... |
    | es-9 . as6 . | desmaj7 ... | d% . g7 . | c-9 . d% g7 |

This will be printed as:

[Image]

Note that in this example each bar has 4 'places', although not all of them are filled with a chord. By using '.' for repeating chords, a place is left empty so the bars come out aligned in the diagram.

Another example:

    !t Donna Lee
    !s Charlie Parker

    Order: A B A B

    = A
    | as . | f7 . | bes7 . | bes7 . |
    | bes-7 . | es7 . | as . | es-7 D7 |
    | des . | des-7 . | as . | f7 . |
    | bes7 . | bes7 . | bes-7 . | es7 . |

    = B
    | as . | f7 . | bes7 . | bes7 . |
    | c7 . | c7 . | f- . | c7#9 . |
    | f- . | c7 . | f- . | aso . |
    | as f7 | bes-7 es7 | as - | bes-7 es7 |

This will be printed as:

[Image]

Chord diagrams can be included, e.g.

[Image]

Chords can also be specified using LilyPond syntax, e.g.

    | aes2 | f:7 | bes:7 | bes:7 |
    | bes:m7 | ees:7 | aes | ees4:m7 d:7 |
    ...

A new version is under development that can generate PDF documents instead of (actually: as well as) PostScript, and can cooperate with tools like ChordBot and iRealPro.

Current version: 2.025
Archived: CPAN sites. The MetaCPAN search engine will find it for you.