A lead sheet - GNU LilyPond
Description: GNU LilyPond

Next: Adding titles, Previous: Printing lyrics, Up: Tutorial

### 2.14 A lead sheet

In popular music, it is common to denote accompaniment with chord names. Such chords can be entered like notes,

>          \chordmode { c2 f4. g8 }

Now each pitch is read as the root of a chord instead of a note. This mode is switched on with `\chordmode`

Other chords can be created by adding modifiers after a colon. The following example shows a few common modifiers

>          \chordmode { c2 f4:m g4:maj7 gis1:dim7 }

For lead sheets, chords are not printed on staves, but as names on a line for themselves. This is achieved by using `\chords` instead of `\chordmode`. This uses the same syntax as `\chordmode`, but renders the notes in a `ChordNames` context, with the following result.

>          \chords { c2 f4.:m g4.:maj7 gis8:dim7 }

When put together, chord names, lyrics and a melody form a lead sheet, for example,

    <<
      \chords { chords }
      the melody
      \addlyrics { the text }
    >>
    }

A complete list of modifiers and other options for layout can be found in Chords.

This page is for LilyPond-2.8.8 (stable-branch).

Other languages: English.
Using automatic language selection.