Transposition tip: Ignored Terms

Brandon Munday
2017-10-29 23:17

A common question is asked about Worship LIVE! transposition: "When I transpose a song, this or that line of chords does not transpose. All the other lines do."

The issue is usually some text added to the chords line, indicating a technique for the musicians or singers, like adding "(to Bridge)" or "Go to verse".

Our software will transpose any line containing ONLY chords. It tries to transpose every chunk of text in the song, first assuming it's a chord. Of course if it doesn't start with A thru G, it can skip right out. "Bridge" requires a bit more work - "B" is a valid letter to begin a chord - but "r" (the second letter) is obviously not part of any common chord - only m, #, b, 7, etc. would be appropriate. "(to" is also obviously not a chord... etc. So the software sees that some of the character groups on that line are not transposable, it simply skips the line.

This may seem a bit odd... why not just transpose the things that ARE chords? Unfortunately, some things that ARE chords are also real words - like "A" or "Am". As an example for why this won't work, what if we had a song containing the line "I am a Christian"? It would be odd to end up with "I Bbm Bb Christian".

There is one exception to this rule: the Worship LIVE! software has a "Ignored Terms" list, on the preferences tab of the same name. Anything on this list will be ignored during transposition, so it can exist on the same line as chords. Note that this list can contain only single words - so "(to Bridge)" can't be added without splitting it up into two separate entries.

Therefore, here's the workaround for this issue:
1) Move the technique notes to a lyric line
2) Add "(to" and "Bridge)" and "verse)" to the Ignored Terms list.

We recommend option #1, as a regular way of writing technique notes - always put them on a non-chords line.

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