chord-diagram

Utility to query the fretboard diagrams of several lute-family instruments.

System Requirements

• A recent LilyPond
• A recent Ruby

Usage

Invoke the following command to query the fret diagrams of four common chords on guitalele:

$ chord-diagram guitalele C Am F G7

You will get guitalele-C-Am-F-G7.png on your working directory.

Supported Instruments

• guitar
• ukulele
• baritone, i.e. baritone ukulele
• guitalele
• mandolin
• cajun, i.e. mandolin with cajun tuning
• mandola

Banjos and bass guitars are not supported because their fretboard diagrams are not bundled with LilyPond.

The fretboard diagrams of banjoleles are same as those of ukuleles.

Command-Line Parameters

• -v or --version to show version info and exit
• -h or --help to show help message and exit
• -o or --output to specify the output file name
• -s or --size to specify the size of a fretboard diagram
• -ly or --lilypond to generate the corresponding LilyPond code instead

Warning

The fretboard diagrams are based on the predefined fretboard diagrams provided by LilyPond. They are never the sole fretboard diagram given a chord.

Some of the fretboard diagrams provided by LilyPond are extremely difficult or impossible to fret by most people. We cannot check every diagram. If in doubt, search online resources or consult your music teacher.

Contribute

Welcome to package the program into some installable format like a Chocolatey package or a Homebrew package.

Other contributions are welcome as well.

TODO

• To support keyboard diagrams

Copyright

The program itself is licensed under MIT.

You keep your own fretboard diagrams or LilyPond code generated by the program in any license you prefer.