Chord Notepad is a text editor for chord sheets. It detects chord symbols in plain text, highlights them, and plays them back through a MIDI synthesizer.

Songs are plain text files, with chords on one line and lyrics on the line below. Lines that contain only chords are recognized as chord lines; other lines are left as text.

Chord notation

• American: C, Am, Bb7, Cmaj7, C/G
• European: Do, Rem, Fa#, Sol7
• Roman numerals, relative to the song's key: I, ii, V7, vi/I, ♭III
• Duration in beats: C*2, Am*4.5

Directives

ChordPro-style directives set the tempo, time signature and key, and mark and repeat sections: {bpm: 120}, {time: 3/4}, {key: G}, {label: chorus}, {loop: chorus 2}.

Playback

• Click a chord to play it, or play the whole song. The current chord is highlighted.
• FluidSynth with the GeneralUser GS soundfont (General MIDI, 128 instruments).
• Piano voicing chooses each chord's notes to minimize movement from the previous chord.
• Guitar voicing uses fingerings within a four-fret span. Tunings: standard, Drop D, DADGAD, Open G, and ukulele.
• Ensemble voicing for SATB, TTBB and SSA choir, and string quartet.
• Speed multiplier and metronome.

Chord sheet

A panel below the editor shows the voiced chords as a piano roll, a staff, chord diagrams or tablature, and follows the playback position.

Tools

• Transpose
• Capo suggestion
• Conversion between American and European notation
• Chord identification from a set of notes
• MIDI file export

Release write-up and technical details: https://tibich.com/blog/chord-notepad-release/