Transposing Chord Sheets in Microsoft Word

[shayward]

Hi Everybody

I'm gearing up to speak at the 2009 Toronto Code Camp for .NET Developers. This year I'm submitting an abstract to speak on Visual Studio Tools for Office. Basically it lets VB and C# programmers build new tools into Microsoft Office products.

My problem for Microsoft Word:

As a worship leader (and the guy who is always stuck making/printing chord sheets) I wanted a way to quickly transpose chord sheets. That way, I can capot and the bass player isn't lost.

Word with a song in the key of A
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A "Chord Sheet" tab on the Ribbon bar
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After clicking the Transpose button
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Telling it the song is in A and needs to go to Bb
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Transposition in less than 2 seconds
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And sometimes you just need to strip out the chords to make lyric sheets
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I thought it was kind of a neat little thing.

For PowerPoint I'm working on bringing in slides of song lyrics from a library and for Excel I'm going to give managers a way to query databases that won't give IT support staff a headache.

[kbob]

awesome software!!!

[kevin12130]

That's pretty kool !!! Any beta software for me to try this on?

[shayward]

That's pretty kool !!! Any beta software for me to try this on?

Not yet - I just wrote it today and I have to give it a thorough test on a few clean machines (no development tools) to see how she deploys.

I'll post it when I have something end-user friendly.

[Padre' Mike]

After spending hours to-day transposing for our Music Group, I think this would be an awesome tool....Please keep me posted on this and if there is some way I can help just ask and if I can I will.....Blessings in Yeshua.....Mike

[stevegoad]

Well, I'm a pretty good musician, and do a lot of chords, so transposition is old hat to me... When this gets a bit further along, I would love to see this tool available to those of us who aren't programmer types.

[dmot]

While I think a lot of people use it for projection, I use OpenSong for this. That may give you some ideas on what you might want to do with your project. I also like how I can put both the actual and capo chords on the same sheet and how easy it is to manipulate where you want the capo to go.

[bananaboat]

Have you got a friendly version yet

[shayward]

While I think a lot of people use it for projection, I use OpenSong for this. That may give you some ideas on what you might want to do with your project. I also like how I can put both the actual and capo chords on the same sheet and how easy it is to manipulate where you want the capo to go.

Hey, maybe I'm totally reinventing the wheel here. Granted, I'm doing it for a programming talk.

Have you got a friendly version yet

So far, no. As I get closer to April I will have to have something usable for the talk.

[Natbud]

Any closer to this being available? - have been looking for something that integrates to word in this way for a couple of years....would love to use it!

[pdc]

There is already software like this available that allows for composing, playing MIDI instruments, etc. Just wondering what your goal is.

[Natbud]

Originally Posted by pdc

There is already software like this available that allows for composing, playing MIDI instruments, etc. Just wondering what your goal is.

Sorry for butting in.......but MIDI composing software is for, well, just that -composing and recording to MIDI. What this does is integrate the ability to transpose a chord sheet on the fly into MS WORD and I haven't seen anything else which will do that. There are transposers which have their own interface but not a plugin for WORD. This is great for bands using MS WORD chord sheets with different leaders who play stuff in different keys and retains the use of MS WORD which is great.