Transposing songs

• How chords are found
• Chords it understands
• Keys, sharps and flats
• Possible chord typos
• Chord styles: English, Latin, Nashville
• Fonts, formatting and highlighting
• Hearing a chord
• Undo and editing

How chords are found

The Tray Transpose Tool changes chords and nothing else. It looks for lines of chords: lines where every word is a chord. Lyrics are never changed, even words that happen to look like chords, such as “A” or “Am” in “Am I a soldier”.

A line of chords may also contain:

• section names such as Intro:, Verse 2, Chorus or Bridge;
• bar lines |, repeat marks such as x2 or (2x), slashes / / /, and N.C.;
• chords joined by hyphens, such as Am-G-F, or in parentheses, such as (G).

Chords inside the words in square brackets, as in [G]Amazing [C]grace, are transposed too.

You can add your own words to the list in Settings → Chords → Words allowed on chord lines.

Chords it understands

Only the note names change: in G7sus4/B, the G and the B are transposed and 7sus4 stays exactly as you wrote it.

Keys, sharps and flats

From is the key the song is in now. When a song arrives, the Tray Transpose Tool guesses it from the chords, and says so in the status line. Songs in a minor key are reported as minor (for example “Key: Em”). If the guess is wrong, choose the right key in From before transposing. You can turn guessing off in Settings → Chords.

To is the new key. The list has both spellings of the black-key notes, such as C♯ and D♭, because the choice decides how the chords are written:

• In flat keys (F, B♭, E♭…), borrowed chords use flats; in sharp keys (G, D, A…), they use sharps.
• Chords keep their musical meaning: moving from C to D turns D/F# into E/G# and Bb into C.
• Hard-to-read notes such as E♯, B♯, C♭ and F♭ are written as F, C, B and E. To keep the theory-correct names, untick that option in Settings → Chords.

Choosing the same note with a different spelling (for example From C♯, To D♭) just rewrites the sharps as flats.

Possible chord typos

If a line is mostly chords but one word isn't a chord (for example G  Gsu4  C), it's probably a typing mistake. The Tray Transpose Tool can't safely transpose that line, so it leaves it as it is. Before transposing, it tells you, so the line isn't left behind in the old key:

• Show me selects the word so you can fix it;
• Transpose anyway transposes everything else and leaves that line alone.

Chords → Find possible chord typos finds them one by one at any time. If a word on your chord lines isn't a typo (a name such as “Tag” or “Vamp”), add it to Words allowed on chord lines in Settings → Chords.

Chord styles: English, Latin, Nashville

The Tray Transpose Tool reads three ways of writing chords, and works out which one a song uses:

• English: A B C D E F G, the usual style in English-speaking countries.
• Latin: Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si, used in Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian songbooks.
• Nashville numbers: 1 4 5 6m (or Roman numerals I IV V vi), which number the chords from the key, so the same chart works in every key.

The Chords list at the top shows the style it's reading. If it guessed wrong, choose the right one there. To always use one style, set it in Settings → Chords.

Converting between styles

Choose Chords → Convert chords to and pick a style:

• To Nashville numbers: the key in From becomes 1. In G, the chords G C D Em become 1 4 5 6m. A number right after the chord number is raised, as in 5⁷, so it isn't read as fifty-seven.
• From Nashville numbers: choose the key in Key (the To list), then convert, or simply choose Write chords. Lowercase Roman numerals (ii, vi) become minor chords.
• Between English and Latin: the chords are rewritten in the same key.

Fonts, formatting and highlighting

Songs copied with formatting (from Word, Outlook, web pages) keep their fonts, sizes and colors. Version 3 measures the real width of the letters on screen, so chords stay over their words in any font, not only in monospaced fonts such as Courier. When a new chord is longer or shorter than the old one, the spaces after it are adjusted so the next chord lands where it was.

The program you paste into must show the song in the same fonts for the chords to line up there. That's normally the case. If you paste into a program that changes the font, choose a monospaced font such as Consolas or Courier New in that program.

Songs copied as plain text (from Notepad and many web sites) appear in Consolas, which keeps chords lined up in any program. Their title, headings and chord lines are highlighted. Change the font, the highlight colors, and the heading words in Settings → Text & highlighting. To highlight formatted songs as well whenever they're pasted in, tick Highlight chords and headings when a song is pasted in in Settings → Chords.

The buttons next to the menus do the most common jobs with one click: new song from the clipboard, copy, copy and hide, font, bold, italic, underline, highlight, wrap long lines, guess the key, and this manual. Point at a button to see what it does.

The Format menu has Font, Bold, Italic, Underline, Highlight chords and headings (Ctrl+H) for any song, and Clear formatting.

Hearing a chord

Click any chord to hear it strummed on a guitar, through Windows' built-in sound. You can click anywhere on the chord, or a space or two either side of it. Clicking further away, or on the lyrics, plays nothing, so it doesn't get in the way when you edit the song.

To choose another sound, such as classical guitar, piano, organ, strings or choir, open Chords → Chord sound, or Settings → Chords, where Try it plays a sample. To turn chord sounds off, untick Chords → Play chords when clicked.

Undo and editing

You can type in the window like any editor. Edit → Undo (Ctrl+Z) steps back through your typing and your transpositions, one at a time; Redo (Ctrl+Y) steps forward again.

New from clipboard (F5) replaces the song with whatever is on the clipboard now. Copy and hide (Ctrl+Enter) copies the whole song and hides the window.