Music notation comes in a handful of different formats, but the most ubiquitous of them is the humble chord chart.
…except—they’re becoming A LOT fancier.
You see, the music that fuels your favorite worship tunes have become much more complex, which requires a chord chart to render as easily as possible to many folks who don’t read standard music notation.
Although a robust chord chart should never replace your “ear,” it’s immensely helpful to have a chord chart that is clear, succinct, and gives each musician confidence as they navigate the changes.
Here’s how you can put one together.
The Old Way
For many of you, especially the more, uh—experienced musicians—you’re likely familiar with a simple sheet of lyrics, double-spaced lines through which chord symbols are handwritten, above the appropriate words.
For much of the history of this music, this type of format was all that you’d need to put together a great sounding song. Most players would follow along with conventional rhythm playing, and complex figures were largely left to be improvised by “lead” players, or were learned by ear and only played in a few specific sections, like intros and interludes.
But fast-forward to the last decade or so, and you’ll see that the musical landscape has significantly changed. Bands are now required to play more complex moving lines, riffs, and accents within particular points in a musical phrase. In essence, the end result is very much like what you’d expect from a pit orchestra, with specific cues, vamps, and figures that demand precision.
So with that said, the simpler chord charts aren’t quite enough to give clarity when finer precision is required.
It’s important to note that the simpler charts were never designed with complexity in mind; those details were left to the band to interpret and relied on their abilities to improvise and recreate lines from a recording.
Today’s modern worship bands will still use that approach, but our chord charts need to rise to a similar level of standard musical notation, but without requiring “music reading” from the band.
Leveling Up
OK—here’s the older way of putting together a chord chart:
Keep it to one or two pages.
Have clear section headings for verses, choruses, etc.
Keep text justification (i.e., left-aligned) flush with optional indentations for choruses, refrains, and/or bridges.
Lyrics are double-spaced, with chord symbols written above keywords, either aligned to the first letter or toward the end of a lyric.
The more modern way keeps much of these characteristics, but hones in on some points to bring even greater clarity:
Use bold-face for section headings and chord symbols; leave lyrics in regular type. Choruses and refrains can also be italicized.
If a chord changes within a multi-syllable word, separate the syllables with hyphens, adding a space on either side of the hyphen, e.g., “a - noin- ted.” This gives a clear indication of exactly where a chord is to be played.
Use QWERTY symbols to approximate standard musical notation where applicable. This is where you can write out time signatures, rhythm slashes, and repeats for things like vamps or interludes, e.g., “4/4 ||: C / / / | F/C / / / :||
Give specific form/arrangement directions in parentheses, bold-face and italicized, e.g., “(2nd time to Bridge)
Err on the side of displaying the literal sequence of sections so your band doesn’t have to find repeats. However, to keep your music within two pages, you’ll likely need to break this rule. Just be clear with endings, like “1.” “2.” etc. Most chord charts will rarely use a D.S., D.C., or fine markers.
While there are many ways to write out chord qualities and more advanced chord extensions, I would avoid using mathematical symbols, e.g., a delta for major 7ths, a (-) for minor chords, etc. Here’s what I do: maj7, m7, min(maj7), dim7, m7(♭5), 7(♯5), etc.
You’ll notice above that I don’t use a “b” for flats, nor a “#” for sharps. The unicode characters for flats, sharps, double-flats, and double-sharps are available online; you can simply copy/paste them into your document if your building a chart through a word processor.
When it comes to melodies or particularly complex rhythms, this is where you rely on time spent learning by ear to recreate those figures. In your notation, you can give the general harmony that is being played, but you’ll need to rely on memory from rehearsed practice to pull off the line, or otherwise, improvise a new one.
An Example
To give you an idea of how I put together a chord chart, here’s a copy of an original song called “Blessed Are They (Psalm 1).” It’s a little more generalized than what other charts look like, such as the lack of a direction at the end of Verse 2 and the Bridge to go back to the Chorus—but this type of arrangement is implicitly understood by most experienced musicians.
Be blessed 👊
Derek is the founder and director of Worship Strategies and is also Creative Ministries Director Faith Family Church in Fayette, MO. Outside of ministry, he is active as a musician and entrepreneur. He is married to his wife Kaitlynn, and they have two beautiful daughters.
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