Does anyone know a good ASCII way to make piano chord charts

[publicradio]

I know there's a system for guitar tabs, but I'd like to jot down some picture chords for piano. Something like this:



But that I could jot into a notepad program with Unicode characters. Any ideas?

[NAD]

Maybe something like this?

Code: Select all

┌─┬─┬┬─┬─┬─┬─┬┬─┬┬─┬─┐
│ │ ││ │ │ │ ││ ││ │ │
│ └┬┘└┬┘ │ └┬┘└┬┘└┬┘ │
│X │  │X │  │X │  │  │
└──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┘

[publicradio]

I'm impressed. That's actually pretty good. You could even simplify it, like so:

Code: Select all

┌─┬─┬┬─┬─┬─┬─┬┬─┬┬─┬─┐
│ └┬┘└x┘ │ └┬┘└┬┘└x┘ │
└──┴──┴──┴x─┴──┴x─┴──┘

[publicradio]

Or even this:

Code: Select all

┌─┬─┬┬─┬─┬─┬─┬┬─┬┬─┬─┐
│ └┬┘└●┘ │ └┬┘└┬┘└●┘ │
└──┴──┴──┴●─┴──┴●─┴──┘

[NAD]

Even more compact:

Code: Select all

┌┬─┬─┬┬┬o┬─┬─┬┐
│└┬┴┬┘│└┬┴┬┴┬┘│
└─┴o┴─┴─┴─┴o┴─┘

[BertKoor]

Once you have memorised how chords are constructed (under the hood they are all the same intervals) then the tabs become obsolete

[publicradio]

You're right, that is pretty compact. I like it a little more stretched out because you can then fit the notes above it:

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            G♭ A♭ B♭C♭  D♭ E♭  F G♭
┌─┬─┬┬─┬─┬─┬●┬┬●┬┬●┬─┬─┬●┬┬●┬─┬─┬●┬┬─┬┬─┬─┐
│ └┬┘└┬┘ │ └┬┘└┬┘└┬┘ │ └┬┘└┬┘ │ └┬┘└┬┘└┬┘ │
└──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴──┴●─┴──┴──┴──┴─●┴──┴──┴──┘

But I like the idea of having the markers on the tops of the black keys because it makes it even easier to tell them apart from the white ones.