MS Win9x/Me/W2k/XP
A chord song is a very powerful way to store a song in a simple format - just lyrics with the chords written above. The only problem is that the song is written in ONE key, that may not be a comfortable guitar key (or what instrument you play) or fit your vocal range. Chord Song Transposer is the cure for that! CST scans the file for chord symbols and replaces them according to your wish. Even easier than transposing a MIDI-file! Not convinced? Download the free demo today!
You need to have >winzip installed on your computer. Just click on the zip file you downloaded and from within winzip, press the 'Install' button.
First of all you need a file to transpose. Let's say you find a song on the Internet: You must save the file to your hard drive by using your browser's 'Save As' function. It is recommended that you chose to save it in plain text format (*.txt). Load the file you just created into CST by selecting File -> Open. The 'Action' meny now activates. From that you can chose what you want to do with the song. Basically, you can do two things: Transpose or perform enharmonic shift. Transpose changes the key of the whole song and enharmonic shift toggles between #-signs and b-signs. As you can see, there are many predefined types of the transpose option. Once you've found your optimal key you might eventually use the 'Enharmonic shift' function so that the music police won't arrest you:)
When you are satisfied with the result you chose 'File->Save As'. The standard dialog now lets you save your "work" to your hard drive for later use. You could for example name the file "mysong_transposed.txt".
CST has currently no built in printing option. It's recommended that you use Wordpad (included in windows) or a word processor like MS Word for that purpose. You should use a font with constant width, for example courier new. If you use a font with dynamic width (most fonts), the chord symbols might not get the positions they were intended to. Tip: You should also avoid to have [tab]-characters in your song file (In MS Word displayed " ->"). Of course you can also use Notepad for printing but then you'll have no control of the page breaks.
The only thing you should have to alter in the settings is the default song dir. It is by default "c:\"and you could change it to "c:\my documents\songs", for example. The list of symbols below the song directory field are chord symbols identifiers. If you discover a chord that CST doesn't, you could eventually add it here. If you delete all identifiers CST will stop functioning completely! No panic, you can always restore the default settings from the setting window's 'File' menu.
The Chord Song Transposer application and its accompanying support files are provided 'as is' and no warranty of fitness for a particular use or purpose is offered. The author shall not be held responsible for any damage caused by Chord Song Transposer, including but not limited to loss of profit, data, or use of Chord Song Transposer or other software, even if the author has been specifically advised of the possibility of such damages. The author has no responsibility for support or maintenance of Chord Song Transposer.
Copyright 2001 D. Sperling
The trial/demo version of this software may be distributed freely in it's original form.
YOU USE CHORD SONG TRANSPOSER COMPLETELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Note: The statements above are , where applicable, also true for the contents of this website.
Happy transposing!
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