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• • September 19, 2012 at 5:33 am #63182
    Ellyen

    Member

    Hi,

    I'm trying to create a songbook with cords on top of each line of the first strophe of every song. The blunt approach here would be to put the chords on a line above the lyrics and put enough spaces between them to bring them to the right position. For example:

    a G e a d a

    As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I,

    a G e a d a

    their armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by.

    There are two problems with this:

    1. If I use anything other than a static font the chords will move every time I change the font or even resize it, then I have to go over them and reposition them again.

    2. If one of the lines is too long for the document it is used in and therefore an automatic line break is inserted the following happens:

    a G e a

    d a

    As down the glen one Easter morn to a

    city fair rode I,

    This is an even greater problem because I would have to switch line 2 and 3 for it to fit again. If it was only a handful songs that wouldn't be a problem, but we're talking about 200+ songs and I just don't have the time (or nerve) to go through all of them every time I need to change anything about the document.

    Is there anyway to have the chords “stick” to the word the belong to (for example “a” to “down” in my example) or at least keep every other line together so I won't have the second problem any more?

    Any suggestion is appreciated, thanks in advance,

    Ellyen

  • September 19, 2012 at 8:21 am #63183
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    The best solution would be to place each chord in its own text frame and anchor it in place. That is, put the chord “A” in a frame by itself, then anchor it. If you're in CS5.5 or later, you can anchor quickly by placing the text frame where you want it, then dragging the little blue frame in the upper right corner of the text frame to the anchor position you want.

  • September 22, 2012 at 1:58 am #63203
    Ognjisce d.o.o. Benjamin Pezdir

    Member

    I do exactly what David suggested. Yes, it's a lot of work (shortcuts can be a huge timesaver), but it always brings smile on my face whenever I need to change something and I know I can be sure everything is where it is supposed to be :)

    B.

  • September 24, 2012 at 7:35 am #63217
    Coreen Montagna

    Member

    Another “duct tape” idea would be to just type the chord right after the letter you want it to appear over (for example, type the first “a” after the “o” in down, so that it reads “doawn”) Then select the “a”, raise the baseline to an amount the you like, then put the cursor in front of the chord letter and kern it so close to the letter prior that the space the “a” used to take up now disappears. I tried this with your first line of lyrics, and it seemed to work fairly well. You have to make adjustments to the baseline shift if you increase the point size, and when you change fonts the kerning might need to be adjusted. But overall, when I increased the font size to make the text wrap and when I changed the font to several different fonts, the chords basically stayed where they were supposed to. You can apply the baseline shift with a character style. I don't think you can do the same with the kerning, esp since the amount of negative kerning needed will differ for each chord notation. But it's an idea :)

  • October 2, 2012 at 10:18 am #63276
    Ellyen

    Member

    Thanks for the help! The big problem is just the amount of work it would take to realize those solutions. I might try your idea, David, we'll see.

    Again, thanks :)

  • October 4, 2012 at 7:03 am #63293
    Shawn Girsberger

    Member

    David's suggestion is most logical, but I recommend using Finale or Sibelius — the right software — for this purpose.

    However, if InDesign is what you have to work with, I might recommend trying tables for this purpose. This way, you could type each chord name in an individual cell, and then all words of the verse to which that chord applies in an individual cell in the row below the chord row (see below). I left the cell borders in so you can see how everything could start out in the cells, and then you could adjust as needed. I think is conceptually how lyrics behave in notation software, as they are typically centered under notes and rests, and chord symbols are assigned in the same way above the staff.

    

  • October 4, 2012 at 7:05 am #63294
    Shawn Girsberger

    Member

    Curious — did I do something wrong? I inserted the URL for the image, but it didn't post? The URL is https://www.girsbergerdesign.co…..index.html

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