The G-Chords Font

A versatile font for use in word processing and Music Notation Software programs.

The G-Chords Font

The G-chords font, designed by Georg Di Filippo, is a very useful addition to anybody's library of musical tools. It contains all (or perhaps almost all) of the common symbols used for the notation of chord abbreviations in jazz and pop harmony. Some of the symbols have a number of variations, so as to be adaptable to the individual taste or habit of the arranger or composer. For instance, for half-diminished chords there is the circle-with-slash, and at least two possible variants: "m7b5" and "-7b5", each of which is only one character. A working familiarity with the variety of available symbols and some experimentation in combining them will suggest further possibilities. You will probably find a few symbols that are not part of your regular repertory, as well.

Perhaps you have always just typed your chord symbols using a regular font. Obviously this works OK for the most part. The two jewels of the G-chord font are the circle-and-slash for the half-diminished sign, and the delta symbol for a major seventh. Most of the rest can pretty well be duplicated with any font, but the G-chord symbols are a little more compact and use fewer characters. Some chords, like "Am7", for instance, use the exact same characters in G-chords as in any regular alphabetic font. Others, regrettably, are not at all intuitive and require knowing what keyboard character is going to produce what chord symbol. I used to have the experience of needing to leave a lot of space in my charts for a chord like "Bbm7b5/Eb" - that's nine characters, to take an extreme example. G-chords can do that in only 4 characters: "I%Wj" -- ["I" = "Bb", "%" = "half-diminished sign", "W" = "slash-E", "j" = "subscript flat sign".] and the result is a little more compact. For this extreme example, however, the solution to the question of what characters to type is anything but intuitive. Hence I felt the need to print a translation key to hang on the wall beside my computer desk. My first expedient was to simply type all the characters on the keyboard into a word processor and then change the font to G-chords. The current version, shown below, was created in Adobe Illustrator for the purpose of posting on the web in the Guitar Vacation Retreats resource files.

MusEdit Guitarist's Staff and TAB Notation Software

My own daily use of the G-chords font is with the MusEdit notation software (musedit.com), which I have been using for about 10 years. I only discovered "G-Chords" about 2 years ago, and have found it to be a very useful "plug-in" for MusEdit. MusEdit is a very decent, low-cost music notation program ($79 last time I checked) which has a great many guitarist-friendly special features and some other virtues as well. One of its very wonderful features is the export of bit-map and .png files, which is how we made all the musical examples on this website. It has a pretty decent TAB to staff notation translator. It is very flexible in its output possibilities, much more so than (for instance) PrintMusic, and obviously way cheaper than the big guns like Finale. What I like about it is that I can make sheet music that is designed for my primary purpose, to be EASY TO READ from SEVERAL FEET AWAY on a MUSIC STAND. This means that I want the staves as big as practical, the chord symbols large (but compact) and in color, and large color-coded symbols at all repeats, da capos, d'al-signos and codas. All this I can easily do with MusEdit, unlike other programs which produce an un-alterable standard output type. Most other music notation programs are either trying to be full scale midi interfaces or else they try to reproduce 19th century engraving styles, neither of which interest me. I just want to put notes on paper and make the charts very readable and obvious. Almost everything in MusEdit is completely scalable, and if you really want to get fancy you can export bit-maps or .PNGs and re-assemble them in a program like Adobe Illustrator. Whenever MusEdit does not offer a suitable symbol in its own library, I can use a little text box with a symbol drawn from any font on my system, in any size. I get a couple of useful symbols from the MusicalSymbols font, which I can use at 60 or 72 points - this way I can make a large "Sign"in bright red. For rehearsal letters, I use the Boxmark font, again in bright red. (There are lots of fonts to be found out there on the web with musical symbols.) So this is where the G-chords font comes in: I have found it very useful to put my chord symbols in text boxes above the staves. I can move them to wherever I want, adjust the font size to suite myself, copy and paste them easily, and they don't take up any more room than I want them to.

To download the G-chords font click here.

To check out MusEdit notation software click here.

MusEdit has one small defect: There is no Mac or Linux version, and probably never will be because it was built on a PC-MIDI toolkit for Windows. So we are keeping our eyes open for something comparable that runs on the Mac. If you have it - email us, thanks. Yes, we've looked at a number of Mac programs, and we have our preferences! Anyway, there's a new MusEdit version out as of early 2008, so go check it out!

Feel free to copy the .gif below, print it out, and hang it on your wall!
All the best, Jack

Additions and errata: Since making the chart below, I have discovered a few things that I missed.
Full size natural sign: type "!" (bang)
Sus 2: type quotation mark "
b5/13: type ampersand &