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Getting started

This page is part of the manual of Songpress, a free program to edit and generate guitar scores. Learn more...

Songpress is an application that allows you to typeset songs, with chords an lyrics, easily.

With Songpress you cannot print your songs directly. Instead, once you have prepared your song, you have to "transfer" the song to an application that is able to print it; such as your favourite word processor (Microsoft Word, Openoffice.org, etc.), a desktop publishing application (for example Microsoft Publisher), etc. Why? Because Songpress's business is to format beautiful songs - and it is skilled at it. But to prepare beautiful page layouts is the business of other good pieces of software, such as a Desktop Publishing application.

Thus, how do you prepare a song?

1. In Songpress, compose the song in the ChordPro format. Essentially, just write the song and place the chords into square brackets: [C]This is a [Am]beauty[Em]ful [G7]song.
2. Check out the formatted song in the preview pane. If you like it, go ahead.
3. Copy the song into the Clipboard: select Edit -> Copy as Image
4. Open your favourite "publishing" program (e.g. Microsoft Word) and paste your song: select Edit -> Paste