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Print songs

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smartChord allows you to print your songs directly from your device or export them as clean, professional PDF files.

What you see is what you get

A song is always printed or exported exactly as it is currently displayed in your Songbook. This means that all active modifications are preserved in the printout:

  • Transposition & Capo: If you have transposed a song or applied a Capo, the printed version will show the adjusted chords.
  • Font Size & Zoom: If the text is too large or too small for your printout, you don’t need to change your global settings. Simply open the song in the Songbook and use the pinch-to-zoom gesture (pinch two fingers together or spread them apart) to adjust the font size. The print layout will immediately adapt to this size.
  • Metadata & Diagrams: Chords and song metadata (like key, tempo, or duration) are included based on your current view settings.

Print Options

When you trigger the print or PDF export function, a dialog opens where you can further customize the output:

  • Color Sets: Choose between three predefined color sets (e.g., a clean, ink-saving black-and-white layout).
  • Color schemes: Print the chord diagrams in the colors of your color scheme or optimized for printout in black and white
  • Chord Diagrams: Decide whether you want to append chord diagrams to the printout or hide them.
  • Page Margins (PC Trick): If you need custom page margins, you can export the song as a PDF, transfer it to your PC, and use your desktop PDF viewer’s print settings to scale the pages precisely.
  • Song information: Add the line with the information below the title: Key, time signature, tempo, duration and capo or add the complete set of information below the song
  • Manual Page Breaks: You can force a page break at any specific point in your song by inserting the {new_page} directive into the song text using the editor.

Print multiple songs at once

If you want to print multiple songs at once, the best way is to use a Set-list. It offers advanced features like automatic page breaks and a table of contents. Read more in the Set-list: Export, import, print and share documentation.

The printout uses all the space on the page to fit the song to the maximum size. It is printed without margins. This is perfect for putting your printouts in clear sleeves. But if you want to file your printouts, a margin can be helpful. To get the printout with margins, we recommend this:

  1. Use the Download PDF button and send the PDF to your PC e.g. via mail
  2. Open the PDF on the PC with a program that allows you to define margins when printing a PDF. Thunderbird and Firefox both do this.

Page break

To control the layout of your song when printing, you can manually insert a page break using the {new_page} directive in your song. This directive forces the lyrics following it to start on a new page.

Some older devices do not support page breaks

How to Use:

Simply add {new_page} at the desired line in your song where you want the page break to occur. For example after the last verse to have the chord charts on a separate page:

Traditional - Amazing Grace

Verse 1:
[A]Amazing [D]Grace, how [A]sweet the [E]sound
[A]That saved a [D]wretch like [E]me.
[A]I once was [D]lost, but [A]now am [E]found,
[A]Was blind but [D]now I [A]see.

Verse 2:
[A]Twas grace that [D]taught my [A]heart to [E]fear,
[A]And grace my [D]fears re[E]lieved.
[A]How precious [D]did that [A]grace ap[E]pear
[A]The hour I [D]first be[A]lieved.

{new_page}