Notes about Chords

Music Edition came about as a little mid-winter project. I have always been fond of the ChordPro song format and always wanted to build ChordPro into a site of my own. I changed careers a few years ago but winters are a good time to dabble in websites again and I actually quite enjoyed this project.

The platform is Ghost, the same one I’ve used in other projects. It’s a slick publishing system with an open-source version. I started with the freely available “Edition” theme (which also inspired the name) and modified it into what has become my ultimate music songbook for jamming.

Songs are in ChordPro format, with tools to transpose, choose your concert key and chord shapes, and get instant guidance on capo placement and harmonica choices. You can adjust font size, auto-scroll, and switch between display formats--chords, Nashville numbers, or inline (my favourite).

There’s also a performance mode with keyboard shortcuts to move through songs, adjust keys, and stay hands-free while playing.

Essentially, you pick the shapes you like to play, the key you like to sing in, and the system tells you the rest. I haven’t seen this combination elsewhere, and paired with clean, curated song sheets, it makes a jam session a lot more fun.

Along with the ChordPro features, we have setlist features. The Discover page takes you through the songs by artist and genre. We also have a Musicians page where songs are grouped by those who put them on the site. All of these pages have Play buttons; one for "Play Page" and another for "Play Setlist". Every song that you find on the site can be added to the setlist by pressing the "♪" beside the song in a list or by using the button on the song toolbar. Arguably the biggest killer feature is the Search page. Type anything into the search box and you will be presented with songs containing the text whether it is in the metadata or the lyrics–and there is "♪" beside every one.

With plenty of ideas for more features, and UI improvements, the site is usable, attractive and fun. It has features that I don't see on other music sites and the songs remain curated. Right now I have two musicians, myself and Chris Hill--I hope he approves. Chris and I have a repertoire of songs we like to play and the chords were arranged how we like them. These songs are in a shared DropBox folder so I used those songs as the starting point. I roughly divided them between Chris and Myself to highlight the "Musicians" feature.

Who can add a song, and how?
In Ghost, authors create posts. In Music Edition, authors are called Musicians. To add a song, log in at https://mcox.ca/ghost and create a new post.

Add the custom snippet “ChordPro Pre”, which inserts the required block:
<pre class="chordpro"></pre>. Paste your ChordPro content inside that tag.

Next, open post settings:

• Add tags--first the Artist, then any genre tags, and finally the required #song tag
• Select the Song template

Publish… and go play the song.

I will be documenting the details as I go in this "Notes" part of the site.