Chord Symbols

There are two ways to add chord symbols and chord charts to your lyrics. The first method simply requires you to select a particular chord in TuneSmith’s chord dictionary and drag and drop it to any desired position in the text editor.

This will insert the chord into the lyrics as well as add the currently selected voicing to the list of guitar chord charts of the selected song.

The second method enables you to enter chords manually to the lyrics by typing them in plain text format into the text editor. Enclose any manually entered chords in square brackets to allow TuneSmith to distinguish them from your lyrics. TuneSmith will intelligently analyze the manually entered chords to produce professionally-looking chord symbols once you switch to the preview mode.

The second method can also be used to quickly add formatted chord symbols and chord charts to basic plain text chord sheets (e.g. ChordPro formatted chord sheets) that are being pasted into the text editor.

TuneSmith will be able to recognize the vast majority of chords even if a particular chord type is written in several different ways (e.g. Cmin7(b5), Cø, Cm7b5, Cmin7b5, Cm7-5, Cmin7-5, Cm7°5, Cmin7°5, C-7°5, C-7-5, C-7b5, C half-dim7, Cm7(-5), etc.). Any chord that is not recognized will show a question mark instead of a properly formatted chord symbol in the preview mode.

Once all the chords have been entered you can click on the ‘Generate Favorite Charts’ button to automatically add matching chord charts from TuneSmith’s chord dictionary to the song.

Whenever a specific chord type has more than one voicing the preferred (favorite) chord chart that has been marked with a star will be selected.

To allow session players to transpose your songs more easily you can print them in the Nashville Number System format. To transform the chord symbols of an existing song, select the song’s key in the drop-down menu at the bottom of the ‘Guitar Chord Charts’ section and click on the ‘Nashville No. System’ button.

The calculated chord numbers are based on the chord’s original position in the selected major key. If the song is written in a minor key, TuneSmith will follow the norm and calculate the chord numbers as if the song were written in the relative major of the selected minor key.