Chord Alignment Issue and Solution

When you copy a song from chord websites on the internet and paste it into MeloRep, you might notice that chords that looked fine on the site shift to the right or left over the words in the app. Although this is often thought of as an app bug, the main reason is actually the text and font structure of the website being copied from.

Why Does the Alignment Shift?

Websites generally use the space bar to align chords to the lyrics on the line below. However, the width each letter and space character takes up on the screen varies depending on the font used (for example, the letter 'i' and the letter 'm' do not have the same width).

When you copy the text, you are not copying the specific page structure of the site, but only the space characters in between. When you open the song in MeloRep, your phone or tablet's screen size and the app's dynamic fonts come into play. This causes the width of those spaces to change and the chords to shift from their original position.

To fix the alignment in standard chord and lyric texts, you can use our free Chord Alignment Tool. To convert your text into the ChordPro format where chords are anchored to words, you can use the ChordPro Converter tool.

The Ultimate Solution: Switching to ChordPro Format

Trying to align chords by pushing them with the space bar will always create shifting problems on different screen sizes. To ensure that your songs are flawlessly aligned on every device, in every font, and in every text size, you must use the ChordPro format.

In ChordPro, instead of writing chords on the top line with spaces, you add them directly into the word with square brackets:

  • The Problematic Method (With Spaces):
    Am            G
    Today the weather is beautiful
  • The Flawless Method (ChordPro):
    [Am]Today the weather is [G]beautiful

If you write the chord right in front of the syllable you want it to fall on, inside square brackets [ ], MeloRep locks that chord to the word. Even if you turn the screen sideways or make the text huge, the chords will never shift.

For more information, you can review our guide titled "What is the ChordPro format and how to use it?".