OnSong is designed to work best with text-based chords and lyrics, giving you the best flexibility when it comes to formatting your song, transposing into other keys, or interacting with your chart for lyrics projection or stage automation. Simply, OnSong works best with the text-based format to unlock its full potential.
If you already have files that you've imported into onSong that you would like to convert to a text-based chord chart, please review the Converting Existing Files Into Text-based Chord Charts article first.
OnSong can understand both the OnSong and ChordPro file formats which are mostly a difference in syntax. The OnSong file format is easier and closer to how you would write a chart in a word processing program whereas ChordPro requires more special characters but has a few more features.
We will be using the OnSong file format for this article since it is easy to learn with simple and natural syntax that can provide musical meaning.
Sections
The first thing to consider is that your song is divided into sections. Sections are parts of your song that consist of blocks of text divided by blank lines. the first section is considered the metadata section. Metadata is just information about your song like the title, artist, key, etc. You can use tags to define information such as key or tempo by typing the name of the tag, followed by a colon, and then the value of the information. One exception to this rule is that you can type the title on the first line, and the artist on the second line without tags. Here is an example of a typical metadata section:
Song Title Here
Artist Name
Key: C
Tempo: 120
Time: 4/4
Once you've entered the metadata, provide a blank line and then start the first section of your song such as the verse. You can type lines of lyrics that you would want to display. You can name sections using section labels. Section labels are created by typing the name of the section on the first line followed by a colon and then by a line break. This tells OnSong that the text that follows belongs in that section. You can create multiple stanzas in that section by adding blank lines and OnSong will consider them as parts of the same section of the song. If you need to type a link of lyrics that ends with a colon, just add a space and OnSong will not consider that to be a section label. Here is an example of a verse in your song.
Verse 1:
This is the first line of my song
It's really hard to do this wrong
If you want a new section this time
Just make sure you have a blank line
Verse 2:
You can see there's a blank line above
Just hit the return or enter key, love
Then label the section if you desire
And we'll add the chords when it's required
When you save your chord chart, you'll notice that the section labels are then bolded. Again, you can add blank lines within these sections to divide a section into two or more stanzas. It's also important to note that OnSong will consider anything beneath the section label to use that label until another section label is encountered.
Chords
You can add chords to a text-based chord chart in one of two ways. If you're converting from an existing file, it's likely that you already have the chords written above the lyrics. This is called "Chords Over Lyrics" in OnSong. As we discussed earlier, you want to align the chords above the lyrics by using the same number of characters in the chord line as in the lyrics line. Remember that you will likely need to adjust this if you are importing from another file due to the font in which the document was originally authored. When you write a song in the OnSong song editor or OnSong Console, the editor uses a fixed-width font so that you can see this alignment.
Another way to write chords is by placing them in square brackets on the same line as the lyrics. This has the advantage of allowing you to combine or split lines of lyrics/chords without a lot of work moving chords around. However, many users find that chords over lyrics are a little easier visually. The key here is that you need to pick one or the other. Using both will not work.
Note: If you use a square bracket anywhere in your song, chords will not be detected if you are placing them over lyrics. Likewise, if you wrap chords with square brackets in their own line above chords, they will not align with the lyrics below.
Here's an example of the same song using chords over lyrics.
Verse 1:
C F C
This is the first line of my song
Am F G
It's really hard to do this wrong
C F C
If you want a new section this time
G C
Just make sure you have a blank line
Now if we wanted to see this as bracketed chords, we could use the Text Tools Menu found in the Song Editor by tapping on the hammer icon and then choose the Bracketed Chords option. OnSong will reformat the song to look like the following:
Verse 1:
[C]This is the [F]first line of my [C]song
It's [Am]really hard to [F]do this [G]wrong
If [C]you want a new [F]section this [C]time
Just make [G]sure you have a blank [C]line
You can then make changes you want using the bracketed chord mode, and use the same Text Tools Menu to switch back to the chords over lyrics mode if desired.
Lastly, there are some ways to provide more details to OnSong for how the content should be rendered, or to provide more meaning. This includes line formatting, comments for hiding lines of text, and musical instruction. This is done by placing certain characters in front of a line of text, or by surrounding a line of text with parenthesis.