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Show HN: Write lead sheets in a Markdown way and transpose in a second

Show HN: Write lead sheets in a Markdown way and transpose in a second

3 comments

·August 3, 2025

Hey HN,

I'm a software engineer with a passion for playing guitar. (https://ivanhsu.co)

In the software industry, we use clever plain-text syntaxes like Markdown and Mermaid to handle complex layouts. This lets us focus on the content itself and quickly produce beautifully formatted documents.

Isn't sheet music and chord charts just another form of documentation in the world of music?

That's why I created Cord Land https://cord.land/landing ! It's a website where you can quickly generate lead sheets and draw chord charts using plain text.

Even better, it can automatically transpose songs! Just write in one key, and it can be instantly converted it to any of the other 11 keys you want.

I've implemented a new syntax called Corduroy, an extension of ChordPro syntax specifically designed for guitarists. Besides showing chord names above lyrics, you can also customize chord charts. For example, `%x32o1o%` will automatically draw a C major chord in the first position!

Feel free to try it out here: https://cord.land/landing#playground For more usage details, please refer to: https://cord.land/tutorial

The name "Cord Land" comes from "Cord" and "Chord" being homophones, representing chords.

Let's keep our passion for playing guitar alive, even after work!

Ivan Hsu

Visit

camtarn

Really cool project - I'm always a fan of things which make writing music in plain text easier.

It looks pretty bad on Android Chrome, sadly - when a tab block is attached to a word it seems to make a large gap between the first letter of the word and the rest of it. Hope it's an easy fix.

nixpulvis

Formatting is pretty broken on iOS safari.

1attice

I was relieved to see this was about music; I was going to say that printing using leaded sheets using markdown is unlikely to be RoHS