Every chord sheet starts life as something ugly. You copy it out of a forum post and the chords land three characters to the left of the syllables they belong to. You transpose it by hand and halfway down the second verse you find yourself playing an A♯7 because that was easier than going back and checking. You print it and the last two lines are alone on page two.
This fixes the first two in a paste and the third in a click. Drop your chart in — chords above the words, or inline [C] notation, whichever you have — and it rebuilds the sheet with every chord sitting over the right syllable, in a key you chose, with bar lines thrown away and section markers left alone.
It runs entirely in your browser. There is no upload step, no account and no queue: the chart stays in a textarea, the file is generated on your own machine, and what you get back is a plain text, ChordPro or HTML file you can open anywhere. I cannot see what you paste.
Paste a chord sheet — chords above the words, or inline [C] notation. Both are read.
Nothing to format yet.
Print sends just this chart to your printer — the menus, sidebar and the rest of the page are left out. If your chart is longer than one page, add a blank line where you want the break and print again.
Plain text is what you paste into a document, a setlist app or a group chat. ChordPro is the bracketed format most chord apps and worship software import. HTML is a standalone file that keeps the layout when you open or print it.
Your chord sheet never leaves the browser. There is no upload anywhere in the code on this page, and no server receives your text.
There is no save button, because there is no account. That also means no autosave — export before you close the tab or you will be pasting it again.
Making a chart a guitarist can actually sight-read
Six habits that matter more than the formatting.
- Put the chord over the syllable where it changes, not over the start of the word. Amazing taking a C on the first syllable reads very differently from one landing on the second, and only one of them is right.
- Keep section markers consistent. [Verse 1], [Chorus], Bridge: and (Tag) are all recognised and left exactly as you wrote them, so the whole band can still shout the same thing at the same time.
- Leave one blank line between sections. It is the difference between a chart you can scan while playing and one you have to stop and search.
- Write for the instrument. A chart bound for a piano player wants the bass note spelled out — C/E — while a rhythm guitarist is happier without it. Transposition moves both the root and the bass.
- Watch the accidentals after a big transpose. A song in G moved up six semitones is full of sharps whether you like it or not; the accidentals setting lets you force flats if the band reads those better.
- Print one page if you can. Nobody turns a page mid-verse. If the chart will not fit, bump it to two columns in your word processor rather than letting it spill.
What transposing actually does here
And the one place it will surprise you.
Transposition is arithmetic, not theory. Every chord is split into a root, a quality and an optional bass note; the root and the bass are moved by the number of semitones you ask for, and the quality — the m, the 7, the sus4 — is carried across untouched. So C♯m7 up two becomes D♯m7, and Am/E down three becomes F♯m/C♯. Shapes survive, which is the point.
The surprise is always the same one: enharmonics. There is no such thing as the correct spelling for a transposed chord, only the conventional one, and this tool picks by counting what you already used. A chart full of flats stays flat; a chart full of sharps stays sharp. If it guesses wrong, or you simply prefer the other spelling, the accidentals dropdown overrides it.
The capo field is the other thing worth understanding. It shifts the written chords down by the fret number, which is what you want when you have a chart in concert pitch and intend to play it with a capo: the shapes you already know end up in the right place, and the sheet gets a Capo 3 line at the top so whoever picks it up next week is not guessing.
Common questions
Is my chord sheet uploaded anywhere?
No. The whole tool runs in your browser. Your text stays in a textarea, the file is built on your own machine when you press Download, and nothing is sent to a server at any point. The site still runs analytics and cookies like any other site — those are described in the privacy policy — but your chart is not part of them.
Which chord notations can it read?
Both of the common ones. Chords on their own line above the words is the classic layout and it is read by position, so the chord keeps its place over the syllable you put it over. Inline [C]Amazing grace notation is read by pulling the brackets out. Mixed sheets work too. Bar lines and pipes are dropped rather than printed.
Why did one of my lyric lines get treated as chords?
Because every word on the line happened to look like a chord. A line containing only Am, or B, or C — a lyric line that is one short word — will be read as a chord line. The detector has no way to tell them apart. Add a word to the line, or wrap the lyric in a way that breaks the pattern, and it goes back to being words.
Can it transpose slash chords and extended chords?
Yes. The root and the bass note both move; the quality in between is preserved. Cmaj7, F♯m7, B♭13, Gsus4, Cadd9, Am/E and Cm7♭5 all survive a transpose. Anything that is not built from a letter root plus accidentals is passed through unchanged rather than mangled.
What is ChordPro, and why would I want it?
It is the bracketed plain-text format that a large number of chord apps, worship planning tools and lyric display programs import directly. Same information as the chart above, just written [C]Amazing grace. If you are moving a chart between apps, ChordPro is usually the least painful thing to carry.
Does printing include the rest of the page?
No. The print stylesheet hides everything on the page except the chart itself, so you get the chords and words at a readable size and nothing else. It is a browser print dialogue, so you can still choose paper size, margins or save-as-PDF before you commit.
Is this a lyrics database?
No. SongTextAI does not store, search or display existing song lyrics, and this tool does not fetch any. You supply the words. If you do not have permission to use a lyric, do not paste it here.
Back to writing
If you landed here before you had words to set, these are the generators people start with.
- Emotion, Love & Faith29
- Everyday Life & Places21
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- Holidays & Seasons17
- Story, Fantasy & Worlds16
- Hip-Hop & Rap15
- Occasions & Milestones15
Or go back to the full list of tools, the generators I use most, or the most recent batch.