Songbook Project

[killdeer43]

http://www.chordie.com/

Utilizing one of the best/most useful sites on the Internet, I've been putting together songbooks for my own use and to share when I need copies for others who might be playing with me.

I pick out songs I enjoy playing and singing and all the chords and lyrics are right there for the taking. I use three-ring binders and Poly-vu clear plastic sheets that allow me to put two songs inside one plastic sheet, back to back. The songs slip in and out quite easily for copying, etc. The plastic sheets protect your songs.

My first and best organized book to date has four favorites: Dylan, Prine, Cash, and Simon. Work your way through this first volume and you've spent a fine day/evening.

**Chordie.com would have been great to have 40 years ago, but then, I might have been challenged to find....a computer! Not to mention the Internet!! :roll:

Joe

 

[southernGuild]

I have been doing almost exactly the same, from varied sources......The plastic sleaves are a great help, easy to remove if need be, and yes, hold 2 songs normally. I use those BIG black and white binders with 2 rings ( and a little hole in the binding) for the 'alphabetic list of songs' ( listed by song titles ), then, smaller individual folders for exclusive songs from favorite artists....then a few oddballs , like kids songs, movie and TV songs, holidays, protest songs! Australian songs, etc!...It took alot of work and time and printing ( and INK) , but now alas... Im pretty well set.
NOW i just have to WORK AT PLAYING them all better! WHEW!!!! :wink:

 

[Ian]

Me too !! I do similar, I've about 4 folders worth of stuff now. I've got mine from all the usual sites on the net, got my last ones from Kurt (Guilds of Grot), excellent stuff.

Dont know if it's possible but often thought it would be good if there was a sticky here where we could add songs. I'll get you guy's playing "10 guitars" yet !!

Cheers, Ian

 

[zzrider]

chordie is one of the best - I found out the hard way that several innocent appearing chord/lyrics sites are loaded with malware.


My main gripe is after copying the text and chords into a word document - I have to fiddle around to sort out the chaff and get the chord changes to align properly -

 

[killdeer43]

chordie is one of the best - I found out the hard way that several innocent appearing chord/lyrics sites are loaded with malware.


My main gripe is after copying the text and chords into a word document - I have to fiddle around to sort out the chaff and get the chord changes to align properly -

I just print directly from chordie after adjusting the font size and maybe transposing to a different key.

Joe

 

[JerryR]

chordie is one of the best - I found out the hard way that several innocent appearing chord/lyrics sites are loaded with malware.


My main gripe is after copying the text and chords into a word document - I have to fiddle around to sort out the chaff and get the chord changes to align properly -

I just print directly from chordie after adjusting the font size and maybe transposing to a different key.

Joe

Whichever source, I do much the same, usually copying and pasting onto a word doc and saving in a doc file headed 'songs'. I can type in my own notes, such as preferred chords, capo setting etc as well.

These are printed and filed alphabetically in songbooks (plastic sleeve and ringbinder) though most once learned are memorized and regurgitated before an unsuspecting public :roll:

 

[SouthernSounds]

Thank you, Joe!

A Great resource!

All the best,

B.

 

[dapmdave]

Me, too! I bring it along to most any jam. But you do have to check those chordie deals pretty close. Not always correct, in my experience. I also put a couple of extra copies in the plastic sleeves (they'll hold 5 or 6 sheets of paper) so I can hand one to other folks who are playing along.

Dave

 

[The Guilds of Grot]

I use Chordie and azchords a lot. Of course you get what you paid for. A lot of times the charts are wrong. What I really think is funny is finding people on YouTube playing songs wrong right off the internet chord charts.

Since my band is a cover band and we strive to play songs as accurately as possible, the charts I write up are for the most part very precise transcriptions of the songs. One other thing we do is if we can't play/sing the song in the key it was recorded in we don't do that song. In a cover band when you start moving keys around the songs start to sound weird.

Thanks for the kind words about my charts Ian.

I had to give up on the plastic sleeves after they started taking up too much room in the binder. I have a 4" binder with just hole punched pages with about 300 songs.

I've posted this before but just in case anybody missed it, here's my chart for the Allman Brothers Melisa;

The numbers in parentheses are the fret to play the chord at. The small numbers are the "beats" per chord. This chart was also written with the word phrasing. You know, where to hold the vowels out and such.

 

[Brad Little]

I belong to a folk music society that gets together once a month. We have a songbook put together from songs that members brought to the meeting over a period of several months. It has 181 songs and was distributed to members as a PDF file. Very handy for our meetings as many of the songs are played fairly regularly.
Brad

 

[learnintoplay62]

Great topic. I've been using ultimate- guitar.com and find its got lots of songs , lots of options. Sometimes, however , the songs just don'tsound right. Of course, that could be my playing :wink:
Thanks Kurt for the Melissa song. I just started to practice that one but was getting frustrated with the chord diagram layouts, just didn't sound right. Where did you get it from or did you make it up?

 

[The Guilds of Grot]

Thanks Kurt for the Melissa song. I just started to practice that one but was getting frustrated with the chord diagram layouts, just didn't sound right. Where did you get it from or did you make it up?

I don't remember where I got it from. Mostly what I do is campare all the internet chord chart sites, then check out how people are playing it on YouTube, and then if I still need more info I try to find a live YouTube of the real band playing the song. The live videos can be tough to see but you can usually figuire out where they're playing it on the fretboard. I then take all that info and play along with the song in my Tascam Bass Trainer and decide what sounds correct!

On Melissa above, only the intro is played with the open chord shapes. All the chords in the verses past the first open E are played with barre chords.

 

[dapmdave]

Thanks Kurt for the Melissa song. I just started to practice that one but was getting frustrated with the chord diagram layouts, just didn't sound right. Where did you get it from or did you make it up?

I don't remember where I got it from. Mostly what I do is campare all the internet chord chart sites, then check out how people are playing it on YouTube, and then if I still need more info I try to find a live YouTube of the real band playing the song. The live videos can be tough to see but you can usually figuire out where they're playing it on the fretboard. I then take all that info and play along with the song in my Tascam Bass Trainer and decide what sounds correct!

On Melissa above, only the intro is played with the open chord shapes. All the chords in the verses past the first open E are played with barre chords.

Kurt brought special songbooks to our Orlando get-together last month. Nicest I've seen, with a lot of work having gone into them.

Dave

 

[dreadnut]

I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but what do you suppose happens when the copyright snakes come after everyone using these sites, just like they did with music downloading sites? Just sayin'...

 

[killdeer43]

I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but what do you suppose happens when the copyright snakes come after everyone using these sites, just like they did with music downloading sites? Just sayin'...

To paraphrase a certain American President....bring 'em on! :shock: :lol:

Joe

*And get a new punchbowl, please. :wink:

 

[dapmdave]

I hate to be the turd in the punchbowl, but what do you suppose happens when the copyright snakes come after everyone using these sites, just like they did with music downloading sites? Just sayin'...

There is some music that has been made unavailable at sites like Chordie, due to copyright issues. But I don't see how someone could prove you didn't simply write down the lyrics and work out the chords yourself. That's how it was done back in the day!

Dave

 

[The Guilds of Grot]

There were a few sites that shut down. OLGA was one. The others I guess just don't care!

Speaking about how it was done back in the day, I've been writing up charts for a while as I started before the computer era. I would sit in front of my stereo cassette deck and just wear the buttons out trying to figuire out songs. To learn bass lines, since I had a dual deck I found a way to record with the high speed dubbing and then then play it back at twice the speed which would raise the song exactly an octave so the bass now sounded like a guitar!

Here's one of my old handwritten charts;

It used to take hours to do these and you needed a mile of "correction tape" Sometimes I even used to do real "cut and pastes"! We also found that if you capitalize every word it made it easier to read. I later dropped that after I went digital.

When my parents got their first home computer, I tried writing up a chart in Word-Perfect. The problem was that the program would not print the chords over the right syllables! It wasn't until MS Word came out that you could get it right!

 

[dapmdave]

Speaking about how it was done back in the day, I've been writing up charts for a while as I started before the computer era. I would sit in front of my stereo cassette deck and just wear the buttons out trying to figuire out songs. To learn bass lines, since I had a dual deck I found a way to record with the high speed dubbing and then then play it back at twice the speed which would raise the song exactly an octave so the bass now sounded like a guitar!

Here's one of my old handwritten charts;

Now that's what I'm talking about! (I had a boatload of these back in my band days, too)

Dave

 

[Fiddlegrin]

Sweet!

I too have been doing the Binder/ page protector thing for... decades.

Regarding the word processing, I recommend that you consider acquiring a cd copy of the word program of your choice, then installing it on a laptop that you will not use online and then doing all of your lead sheet processing on it.

The idea being to avoid getting hurt by a terminal failure of a computer. Because as you have no doubt noticed, when we transfer a doc to a different w.p. program all of the formatting gets messed up and we have to go through each lead sheet again putting the chords in the right place etc.

If our computer does die, there is some chance we can load our w.p. program on to a new computer since we have the original cd. Then when we load all our lead sheets (that we backed up) on to that new computer we haven't lost our formatting accuracy.

 

[killdeer43]

I have a ton of songs in a special place where no copyright laws apply, and they're not in a binder, either. They're between my ears!
I feel like I've been blessed with an excellent memory and it's still perking along just fine, thank you very much.
I remember things that surprise me at times, like songs I used to sing for my grandpa when I was a little kid.

Oh yeah, I'm really good at faking it, too! :lol:

Cheers,
Jim......er, Joe :roll: