GuitarTeX2: Making song books easy #

The idea behind this software is simple. You have your songtext and would like to put some chords on it. Maybe add some melodies and explanation to it. Finally create a songbook and generate a PDF for physical printout. GuitarTeX2 make it simple to create all of this.

It’s based on the idea from Martin Leclerc and Mario Dorion from Canada. They developed Chord version 3.5 in 1993. GuitarTeX2 is very similar to the original version. It uses the same syntax. The only difference is the used language Java to parse the chord file and generate the LaTeX source file. Usually you don’t need to know this because it’s happening in the background. The output is a generated PDF. But it’s helpful to know this in case you’re familiar with LaTeX and want to adjust something very specific.

Example: #

This is how a song can be written

{title: The Manual Song}
{subtitle: No-one has yet claimed responsibility}

{bridge}
[D]I print verses [A7]in a [D]row,
The next line gets put [A7]down be[D]low,
Mumble mumble [A7]rhymes with [D]grow [G] [G#] [A]
Done this verse, now [A7sus4]on we [quietly]go!
{/bridge}

{chorus}
[D]This is the [Bm]manual song
[A7]No-one really knows what’s [D]goin’ on
[D]This is the [F#m]manual song
[A7]And now the chorus is already [D]gone
{/chorus}

{bridge}
[D]The second verse is [A7]like the [D]first,
The music poor, the [A7]verse is [D]worse,
I wrote this since [A7]I’d get [D]used,
If I used real songs. [A7]This’ll [D]do.
{/bridge}

{c:repeat chorus}

And this is how the result will look like:

Installation #

Get the most recent version from the project site. This is a java program. You will need at least JRE 1.8 in order to execute it.

For remote file processing make sure outgoung port 3121 is not blocked.