Songwriting Secrets - Chord Charts

1. Introduction to Chord Charts: Welcome my friends. In this clause, you will learn the power of creating and using a cooled short to help you in your songwriting and music making workflow. You will learn what a coded short is, how to create your own code short, what variations you can choose, what helpful tools you can use. And finally, how to use your code short in action to maximize your music-making flow and efficiency. Let us start with the most essential question. What is a core chart? A cold short is a basic layout of the courts used throughout a music composition. A coach or does not show how each chord is played, such as the ridden or playing style of the chords. For example, it will not show the strumming patterns on guitar or arpeggios on piano and so on. It only shows the actual codes used and all the code changes in each measure of music. A chord chart is helpful in so many ways. It will serve as a basic overview of your music composition for when you work on your composition or when you come back later. It will also be a great visual guide when you recorded new ports in your music. And it is also very useful for when you collaborate with fellow musicians or singers, when you brainstorm ideas yourself altogether with others and so on. Basically, a code chart is a simple layout of the essential harmonic story of your music. The guiding sketch from which you then build the complete song. Alright, now it's time for you to learn the variations of code charts you can use and how you can create and use the power of coded shorts in your music-making process. 2. Chord Chart Variations: Called short variations. You can create a code short in various levels of complexity, anywhere from super simple to very detailed, depending on how much information you want to include. The more information and details you have, the more clear the cord shot will be to guide yourself in your music, making progress, as well as people you collaborate with, such as other musicians, singers, etc.. Let's compare the variations or the code shot you can use. Alright, so I'm going to start by demonstrating this short composition I created with percussion, rhythm, bass, harmony, meaning the chord progression and a leading melodies. So basically all the main elements of music. Then I will show you the variations of code charts I have done, starting with a minimum court shot. So it sounds like this minimal coded chart. This is when you only write the main code sets used, most often only the triad form of the code. So major, minor or a suspended chord. You don't include transition courts and generally avoid Code extensions, inversions, or any other more detailed information. To put it short, with a minimal core chart, you basically only show the basic code used for each measure of music. Alright, so for this composition, I just demonstrated, I have created three variations of code shorts. First, Minimal than standard, than a complex one. Here. The quarters, the chord progression in its most simple form on this track. Piano layer, with the strengths. You see the block quotes here with a bass note. I simply recorded the course like this and then let me just show you now, this is how a minimal code shot can look like. As you can see, it's only minor or major chords. So triad courts, no extension or anything. It's not a lot of code, so there's no transition courts in-between all pulsing chords nor suspended chords in-between here for voice-leading is basically as simple as you can get with displaying the chord progression. That is how a minimum code chart can look like. Standard coded short. The standard code short is when you also include Code extensions like seventh chords, add nine course and so on. You should also put in every important core change for each measure of music. Basically, think of your code short as the harmonic story of your music. You should therefore include all important shifts in that story. For example, adding a suspended chord in the middle of a measure or a seventh in the final beat. When those changes are important as a guide for your overall chord progression. How many codes and details to include in a standard CT shot is up to you. And in most cases the guide for when and what causes include, including your code short. It will be your main melody and your baseline. Now I have switched to a standard CT shot and it will include more harmonic information. If you can see this here in the piano roll, you see there is more codes here, more voice-leading. Basically, important, interesting. Morning storing. It all depends how many cores you add, of course, on your chord progression and so on. But in most cases you will include more information. So all important harmonic changes in your track, chord changes not only one bar per core, as you can see here, we have four chords on this bar and also called extensions. So here we have a major seventh suspended forth here. Add nine here. And this of course relates to what melody you have. So if I show case both the melody and chords at the same time, let me see this in reading color. You can see that you can add more changes depending on what your melodic information does here, because the melody is in fact, another harmony it just added is the most important harmony, important voice of your music. And your baseline will help guide you for adding more harmonic information for your actual code chart. This is how standard code shot can look like. You have all the important courts, all the transition chords, chord extension, suspended chords, and so on. Now let's move on to the final motor complex called Shot complex code chart. If you want to be very clear with their code short, you may choose to include even more harmonic information. You can do this by adding more chords for each measure of music. For example, in most cases, it is enough to write the main triad chord use for each measure of music. But when you listen to the melody and baseline, it can guide you to add more records in each measure or music. It can be a different code, but also a code variation or extension that supports your leading melody. Like for example, adding a sixth, seventh, ninth, making it suspended, and so on. You can in some cases add as much as one code for every beat of every measure of music. If you want to be extremely detailed about the harmonic story in your code short. All right, so now I switch to the final complex called short. And let's just check the piano roll first. And you can see there's a lot going on in this chord progression. Email and the bass voice is walking like this here, creating some voice leading. And if it check the score editor, the notation of view, you can see lot more harmonic information, more codes overall in his complex called shot, but also including more advanced extensions like D minor with a major seventh year, and especially adding even this slash courts which are the altered bass note. So this is an a with a G base in the bottom. Let's see if we can check here. So this is a standard, a major chord, but with G in the bass because you have the voice leading for the baseline. Going like this. This is how a complex code shot can look like. Way more harmonic information details about the course. And overall, a more detailed called short and progression. 3. Where to Save your Chord Chart?: Where to save your code short. You can write and place your code short for your music in many places and in many different ways. You can of course, use standard notation software if you prefer, and then print those out or even write your code shorts on actual paper if you are old school. However, I highly recommend you to create your code short in the project file of each specific track you are working on. This is because you will get the most benefit of your code shot When you always have it right there in front of you as you work on your music production inside your music software. But there are still several ways and options you can choose for how to create and save your code shot inside your project. Chord progression notes. The quickest and easiest way to create a code shot is to simply write down the chord progression for each part of your song in a note. So basically the courts used in the intro, the chorus, each verse and so on. This can be great for brainstorming and getting your ideas down quickly. But I always recommend you to create a proper code short later on, because chord progression notes thus not show the proper timing of each code change only the codes used in their progression. However, a chord progression node is still useful, as I said, because it is very quick and easy to create. If your music software has a place to write notes inside your product, then you can use it to write it down in the core progression per part, per section of your song. First, you need to check if your specific music sulfur has a notepad features. So I have one in logic. Up here, I click on this button, or I use a shortcut for it and you'll see it project nodes here. Then you can simply start writing in the core progression for each section of your songs, I do it like this verse, one colon, new line. And then the chord progression, D minor, c, B flat, F, C, D minor, and D minor. So if the code is held more than one borrows. So this is two D minor bars straight here at the same with f here, just to make sure I get the entire progression right. And then you can do this for V2, the chorus, and so on. Another option is to create a more GRE for each section of your song. Then label the markers with this specific chord progression for that part of your song. So basically instead of using the Notepad feature if you don't want to or don't have it in your music software, you can use the market track, create a marker for each new section. So I already created Morcher one, as you can see here, if I open up the marker track so you can see it more clearly. It starts here. Then it will be labeled probably marker one. In this case, just label it the current chord progression for this section. So let me do that again. This is the same thing I wrote previously here in the Notepad. And then you can do this and create a new marker. Let's say the next section start here. Just add a new marker. Once you have brainstormed a new chord progression and melody and so on, you simply write in the new chord progression here. So a, d, c, whatever that chord progression will be. The advantage of this is that you will always have at least a chord progression at the top here, the markers, the downsides of course, that you don't get the placement. As you can see, the B-flat starts here. You only know the chord progression naught when those core challenges or within that section. Finally, you can of course simply write your code short on actual paper or a Notepad global code guide. You can also use a dedicated cooled guide or code track if you're a music software has this feature. This is simply a visual code chart at the top of your sequencer where he can place the courts used throughout your music production. The music software I use is called Logic Pro, and right now it does not have a global code attract or code guide feature. So I have created an alternative where I simply use the arrangement track, then create blocks which I then label with the codes used throughout the entire composition. The main point of having a global code guide is to have your code short, always visible at the top of your sequencer, as this will be a great visual reference for when you record new parts for your music, for example. Okay, so let me show you this. If you go to the top of your sequencer where you have your market FAQ. You often have also an arrangement track in most professional music sulfur. So I will open up the global tracks. And here you can see arrangement and this is how you usually use an arrangement track is actually to arrange your music. For example, this is the verse one leading. Then perhaps we have the core. These are basically the sections of your song, and then you drag them around and arrange your track. However, the way I found out how I can use this is to suspend the content connections. So if I drag this around, it will not shift the actual music. Then let me shift that. I already prepared this. I cut up the regions for the arrangement track into one bar sections or even half pore here as you can see. And then I labeled Each arrangement block the current chord progression. This way. If I close the marker track here, just open-air the arrangement track. Even if I scroll down and add more tracks, you will always have it since it is a global track at the top, if your sequencer basically a code shot, but you use a global code guide or cold track if your DAW has it. Or this other method I came up with in logic, which is to use the arrangement global track. And basically I just label these blocks here. If you wanted to add another court, just slice that up. Let's say this is f x2 here, like so. This is how we can use a global coord guide. You always have a cold shot at the top of your Sequencer, midi code regions. Another option is to use a dedicated track at the top of your project, where you write or record the midi that plays every code change in your music. Then you cut the region for each code change and label those individual regions, the specific code used. This will not only be useful as a code short to use for reference, but also as a resource and visual guide when writing other midi ports in your music. Because you can use those code radians to compare with other midi regions and compare the nodes of the harmony and so on. And it can even copy and paste the course and harmless used in other parts of your arrangement. So you start by creating a midi track at the top of your sequencer where you will record your core progression. I recommend either a piano or for example, a piano with strings layer like this. Then you make sure to always have this track at the top of your sequence or n. Of course, you're muted while you work on your actual music production. But it should always reflect the codes, chord progressions. The hormone is being played in your music composition, your song. However, it will not play is only there for reference. So how you do this is you sliced up for every code change, like you see here. Here we have a chord change, slice up the radians like this with the scissor tool in your DAW after you recorded it. Then you label each region with the actual code. Like you did with the arrangement track or global core track, but you use immediate records or D minor here. You've simply re-label this into, into d, d M for D minor and so on. And I already prepared it for this like so. So here we can see every quarter block inside you have the chord progression. Every block here is labeled. The downside is that if you scroll down, it's not a global track or a global code track, so you will not see it if you scroll too far down. The upside is that you can actually check or reference the current code in your progression with any other track in your projects since it's midi information. So you can check here. We couple with the bass track. Let's see. You can do it like so, open both at the same time. You can see here we have the red track here, denotes all the bass note and then you can check against hear the rhythm track here, this one. Compare that and you can also even listen to it, not only for visual reference, solo like this, and so on for any track in your project. So that is an advantage of using the midi region code shot like this notation called short. If you're a music production, sulfur has a notation feature, or if you prefer to use a standard alone notation software or even sheet music paper, writing your code short in notation form can be extremely useful. Not only because it is more detailed and clear, but also since you can export it or even print it out, this is super useful if you want to collaborate with others or if you want to play and perform your own music on an instrument. If you do this in your music software project file, you will both have a clear coat shot as well as a visual. Reference track for the media and you can still export it as a PDF or print it out. This is why notation core short is my personal favorite way to create a code short for my music. Just like with the midi region called short for this notation feature, you also use midi track with, for example, a piano, where you record or write in your chord progression like this. Either simple, very simple with the US long course, with no extra details in the voice leading transition course. Or in most cases, I stick to the middle road, which is the standard here. You have all the midi notes so you can still use it to check against any other track in your project, like I just showed you with the medial regions. The advantage here is that you go into the notation views or not the piano roll. If your music software has a score of view or notation, you, you simply open it up and it will start with all the notes. You will not see these codes. You have to manually add them by actually dragging in text or codes, check with your music suffers. I go to Text and lyrics on here where I found, I find chords. Left-click drag up here, align it. You can see like solar cell, let's say we have code here. Let us say it is C, like so you can double-click care. Let's say we add M7 here, so C minor or major seven. You can drag it around if you have a code here and so on. But the advantage of main advantages is not only will it be able to add more advanced informations like extensions here, slash course, or altered bass chords and so on. You will also be able to actually print this out to have when you sit by your piano or guitar, for example, play or perform your song or collaborate with other musicians and artists will still have the information to reference, as I told you, like the rhythm track against this one here. Both with audio reference and with visual reference checking the midi information here. Okay, so let's do a quick summary of what you have learned in this lesson about where and how to write your code chart. One, chord progression nodes. For example, the Notepad feature or project notes in your music software, if you have it, a real, actual paper or Notepad, or use them more workers to create marker, markers for each section and then label each marker the actual core progression for every part of your song. To use a global cord guide or cooled track if your music software has that feature, which is basically a global track at the top of your sequencer, where we have a block that is labeled for each code change in your music composition, three midi cord regions. So you create a midi track at the top of your sequencer. Then you record, all right, Your, each code of your chord progression throughout your entire song or composition. And then label each region because you cut it up into small regions, one region per court and label it the current code in your progression. Finally, for notation called shot, where you also use a midi called attract inside your project. If you have a notation feature, if you don't have it, you can use a standalone notation software. But if you have it, you record your course just like with a midi code regions. And then you go into the notation feature or score view and add text labels above each code, change and label each code in the notation view. 4. Helpful tools for Chord Chart Creation: Helpful tools for code short creation. There are plenty of tools you can use to help you out when creating encode shorts. Perhaps you need help labeling the courts you play, or you may need some suggestions for your chord progression. Creating extensions in versions and cool variations and so on. Here are some suggestions. Music software and plugins. In most cases, if you already sit at your computer when doing your sketching, songwriting, and music making, the easiest and quickest tool will be a plugin in your music production software or computers offer a few helpful tools I can personally recommend or one, your music production software itself, especially for code naming. If it has a global coordinate track feature, you may get suggestions there as well. Of course, you need to check what features are available in your music software regarding coordinate naming and suggestions. In logic which I use, I simply go up here to customize control bar and add media activity in, out and up here, if you check now if I play something on my midi keyboard, let's say a C major, it will show see here, Let's add a seventh 117. Let's do F. As you can see, it shows the current core. And if I play it as a block like this, the notes at the same time. The second helpful feature, at least in my music software, is if I recorded a chord here in the piano roll, this is D minor. I can simply select all notes. And up here you will see dm. So D minor. Most DAWs will have some way, some feature to display the course like this. You need to search and find those for yourself because this is probably the most easy and quick solution to help you when you create your chord progression and your code shorts for your music to scalar, which is a chord progression and harmony plugin, which can help you label the key and scale of your song. Come up with chords and suggestions for course, for your chord progression and so on. So this is my favorite tool, a coats and harmony plug-in that you put on, for example, your code strike up here. So of course you can see up here what you play, but even more information is available if you use a chord progression plugin, I use one that is called scalar. So now you can see the keyboard here is of course a bigger interface. So if I just play, let's say D minor. You can see the miner up here. If I play D minor with another base note, you can see D minor slash a. And that information is not available up here in logic. Not only that, you can actually record your chord progression. So let's say something like this. Let's stop there. And this plugin actually detects what scale you use. In this case, all of these has 707 notes from all these scales. And it is blue here to show the most probably scales, or F major, which was the starting code. I can click this and listen. I can drag them down, but this is not a tutorial on this software or this plugin. It's just to show you that on top of your actual music software tools for labeling chords, you can use a chord progression plugin like this scalar. Mixed in key I think is another one. There's a lot of ones out there. You can search for this and alternatives and find one you can use. It will also help because it can often drag and drop like this. You get the code here and even add playing styles and, and a lot of that. But in this case, you get helped with the courts and the key and scale. Finally, MuseScore, which is a standalone notation software. If you prefer to make your code shots in a notation software instead, smartphone apps. If you do your songwriting and sketching on your geared towards digital piano or any other instrument. These often very nice to have a good smart phone app to help you create your code shore. There are thousands of apps to help you with codes in your songwriting process. And I believe you should install and test a lot of smartphone apps yourself to find which ones suits you best. But here are some tools I can personally recommend. If you are using an iPhone, you can use the included music mammals app because you can play your ideas on, for example, guitar or piano. And it includes code analysis. So you can actually check on your app what codes you played in that progression. This is a screenshot from music memos on my iPhone. What I did is I simply played the codes on my midi piano and you can of course use your guitar or any instrument where you play chords on. And then I recorded that and the automatic analysis in the app created this chord progression, progression here below. So that could be a good help for you when you do your songwriting by your piano or guitar and so on. Code AI, which is even more focused on all the code analysis and it's available on both in Android and iPhone. And finally, suggestion, which is a chord progression app to help you come up with a cool chord progressions. The key thing regarding tools like apps, software plugins, and so on, is that you should use what feels comfortable and easy for your personal workflow. I can give you recommendations based on what I use, but you may prefer something completely different. I would say the way to evaluate what tools to use in your songwriting process and to create code charts is to try them out and see if it speeds up your flow. If it use it. If it doesn't, don't use it, it's as simple as that. 5. How to Create a Chord Chart: How to create a chord chart. I am now going to show you how I personally create a code is short so that you can both learn and be inspired. But as you already learned, there are many variations of code shorts. You can use places to write them down. Levels of complexity and so on. You have to find out what suits your personal workflow with code chars in your songwriting and music making process. This is how I often do it, brainstorming to come up with a chord progression. So I simply load a track at the top of my sequence are usually a piano with strings layered like this. I used asked to brainstorming, sketch ideas. I just sit at my midi piano keyboard here and then I stopped playing. Not code the progressions, but actually musical ideas. Okay, So this is my workflow and then perhaps some rhythm, some groove, anything that comes to mind until I stumbled upon something I really want to record. So now I have found a chord progression from brainstorming, that is the first step. Record the chord progression on a specific track. So when I have come up with a nice chord progression, I record those costs on a specific track, most often the same track with piano strings layered in my music sulfur and I call this track harmony or codes. When I record the main courts for my final chord shot, I make sure to not add any rhythm and I all play every main code change. I also make sure to play each quarter as a block, meaning all notes of the chord at the same time, not broken code or arpeggio. This is because this quarterback will be the layout for creating the final code shot. So basically this is where you go from your initial idea you came up with when brainstorming, and so on. And you basically break that down into a chord progression. So just shake what you were actually playing. You can also use one of the core progression tools to help you out. If your DAW has this feature, check what cool you're playing just to make sure you remember each code you can use Notepad feature as you learn to write down the courts you are playing, then you simply want to get down to the basics to the actual court. So if you play something, What were you playing there? Well, we have starting with an F-major in this inversion here. Where we go to C major, we go to the c sus4 first you can see it up here, and then to C, and then to B flat major seven. C, or D minor, a minor, B flat. Then let's finish with f four. I call this C sus it for actually back to F4. Now it's time to record that. You can, if you have trouble recording in real-time on immediate piano arrow command that you set it either at a very low tempo. Let's do 80, or you can use step input where you go into the midi editor and then record not in real-time, but actually all the codes. I usually, my first choice is to just reduce the tempo if you have a time playing correctly. Another tip I have for you to keep in time all your chord changes is to of course use the metronome, but also you can tap your foot to keep the beat even count out loud because you are recording media off rule. You can count 1234 and make sure to add the core changes on the correct bead. So let's say the one and sometimes on the three, if you change the code at the half bar mark. Let's try to record this now, starting with F 3411. To ending with a full to borrow code in there, double-check the code names in my music software. After I recorded the chord progression on this track, I go into the piano roll editor to take all the notes so that there are no wrong notes or wrong timings. I also do final touch-up. An editing like quantizing denotes to the grid, fixing the note length for each code and deleting or moving any nodes if there are any errors where I simply want to change the code color or inversion, you basically go into the midi editor of the chord progression you wrote just recorded here. Then you can go in and edit. So here I can find these ones should be joined with. First, we can quantize everything to the grid, let's say quarter notes. Then you want to make sure that the lengths together are the same. So let's say we are all one bar codes. Make sure all those random bar lengths, like so. Now you have the core progression. Let's listen to it. Listen to it in faster tempo so we can get through this faster. 140. Sounds good. Have a nice chord progression here. Then it's time to actually check more replaying in the code. So you really want to have any cool chord progression. So here you can select, at least in logic and see the code f here. Then you have c, sus4 to C and so on. So you have each core if you want to make any changes, I suggest that you do them here in the piano roll editor first. Let's say you want to have in other harmony. Here, let's use the Scissors Tool. Let's say this node is going there to get credit F-major seventh chord as the transition here, like so. I also suggest that when you do this, make sure that you get an entire chord by cutting everything up like this. Like so. You can see it in the score view as separate code later, but I didn't like that. So let's go back like so. Where you can create inversions like so for example, to create voice-leading, suggested that in the mechanical vector. Let's take those up as well. So that is how you edit. Check everything in the immediate editor, edit the length to quantization errors and mistakes and do any changes you want to use denotation feature to add the code labels. Finally, I open up the notation view for this corporation track and start adding text labels above the staff where I named each code. Now of course this is optional. You get to choose where you write down your core progression as you have learned in this class. So you can use the markers up here, we can use global code guide are called Global Core track. Up here, you can add the codes in the project note pad. You can slice up the radians. You've already learned this, but my favorite way is to go into the actual corporation you created, into the notation viewer score of you in your music software. If it has it, not all DAWs or music production software has this feature, but if you have it, I prefer it, then you simply go in. And let's choose this view here. Then you can start to add the codes. Let's use the first few here. Here we have each quarter. You can see that you can open up the inspector here. You can do a boundary changes, but the main thing is that you want to go in and find a text are called fissures or texts and lyrics like so. And then you can drag it in. In most cases you want to have it on top. Here. In fact, we can go here. It's more clear. So you can have it here and you can see you can align it so align it on each chord. Like so. Then you write in, for example, let us see the first code here. You can select everything and see it's an F here, five nodes selected if major course. So you simply go in. And if you double-click here, you can see you can choose the root note. If it's a minor chord, you can add an M here, for example. Or if you prefer to have it written like that, you can have, let's say an E minor chord with a major seventh on top, then you can choose upper here, and it will look like this. You can format it in any way, like just let's just keep it clean right now. Then I just copy this and put another chord here. You do this for every chord, check the core of what we're replaying. So seesaws for here to C, C, C and then lower sas for, as you can see, it is a bit tedious to go through all this and align everything. But it is so worth it because now you have an actual code short that you can print out, you can use for reference when you produce your music. I find it much more clear to have it here because when you play back your project, if you can look at this code shot, as you play back, you can always go in change the voicings here. If you want to create inversions, it's more care you have the actual code exactly how it is played with the code name here or on top. Any extensions you want to add, some appended courts and so on. And you still have the midi data if you shake the piano roll editor. So you can use this to use this visual reference for the codes compared to, let's say, the bass track here and the code track. Set it to read in color. As you can see, the cortisol here in deep purple and the red or the bass notes. So you can always check for reference. You can check for the references as you already learned in this course as well. So playing it back, you have all these advantages on top of it, having this written notation code shot. This is my favorite way, this is my workflow. You can of course, find out what works for you. But the main point is to always have that code sought for visual reference, for audio reference, for a, as a guide when you write your song. And four, when you collaborate with others or perform your song, because having this at your piano or guitar is a huge help as well. 6. Action - Create your own Chord Chart: Congratulations, you have now learned the power of code shorts in music. You have learned what they called Shot is the variations. You can choose where to write down your courts, tools to help your workflow, how to create a cool shot and several great benefits of using a code short. Now it's time for you to take action and learn by doing, open up your music production software, create a midi piano track and start brainstorming ideas for a chord progression. Then you record it in its most simple form as you have learned, meaning only every code change. Finally, create your own code shot based on what you have learned in this class. Shoes in what way you want to save it, the notation view, the global core track. If you have that feature, slicing up the track into different regions and labeling the regions into the coordinates. Whatever you prefer. Good luck and have fun as you start using the power of code shorts for improving your songwriting, recording, performing, and music making workflow.