In popular music, it is common to denote accompaniment as chord-names.
Using them in LilyPond has two parts, just like lyrics: entering the
chords (with \chords
), and printing them (with \new
ChordNames
).
Chord names are entered by starting chords mode (with \chords
).
In chords mode, you can enter chords with a letter (indicating the
root of the chord), and a durations following that:
\chords { c2 f4. g8 }
The result of \chords
is a list of chords, and is equivalent
to entering chords with <...>
.
Other chords can be created by adding modifiers, after a colon. The following example shows a few common modifiers:
\chords { c2 f4:m g4:maj7 gis1:dim7 }
Printing chords is done by adding \context ChordNames
before the chords thus entered:
\context ChordNames \chords { c2 f4.:m g4.:maj7 gis8:dim7 }
When put together, chord names, lyrics and a melody form a lead sheet, for example,
\score { << \context ChordNames \chords { chords } \addlyrics \notes the melody \context Lyrics \lyrics { the text } >> \paper { } }
A complete list of modifiers, and other options for layout are in the reference manual section Chords.
This page is for LilyPond-2.0.0 (stable-branch).