| Song-level chrome Statements about the whole song. They print as page furniture and mean the same thing from the first bar to the last. Three of them — the capo, the info box and the QR code — also come as a placeable twin you can attach to one stanza, for the case where the fact changes partway through. |
Song capo  Song-level chrome. The song's capo prints as a badge in the header; a mid-song change is a small pill on the stanza where it happens. | Whole song (the header badge) — or one stanza, for a change partway through. | One capo for the song. At most one stanza capo per stanza — setting it again edits the one that's there. | - The whole song is played capo 5 — set it once and the fret is stated on the page where nobody can miss it.
- The capo moves for the last chorus: put a stanza capo on that verse and the concert chords retune from there on.
| - Not a cue. A cue reading “Capo 5” is just text — the chart would say one thing while the chords stayed in the written key. The capo is a real value that transposes.
- Room to move the capo isn't a capo job. Widen the gap with Blank space; the badge doesn't make time, it states a fret.
- Changing the printed chords is Transpose. Capo says where the clamp goes; transpose says what's written.
| - It transposes. A numeric fret shifts the concert chords — from the header for the whole song, or from the stanza the pill sits on.
- Right-click to reposition the badge; GigCharts reserves the room, so it can't collide with the title or the first line.
- A stanza capo placed beside the text costs no page room at all; placed above the stanza it opens a body row over it.
| - A non-numeric or “sliding” value states the fret but transposes nothing.
- One per stanza — you can't stack two capo pills on the same verse.
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Road-map (arrangement)  Anchored to a gap, but it reads as song-level: one block describing the whole running order, parked where the band can find it. | A gap between stanzas (including before the first and after the last). | One road-map per gap. | - The band plays Intro · Verse ×4 · Outro and everyone wants the shape without reading every line.
- The arrangement differs from the printed verse order — the road-map is where you say so once, for everybody.
| - Not one long cue. “Intro, V, V, Ch, V, Outro” typed into a chip is a flat string. Road-map bars are a list you reorder, recolor and count — and the block sizes itself to them.
- Not for margin labels. Labels running down the page edge beside particular stanzas are Markers — same bars, different job.
| - A real ordered list: every bar carries its own label, color and optional ×N.
- One body row per bar, so the block exactly fills the space it opens — add a bar and the gap grows with it.
- Bar colors line up with your Section colors, so “Chorus” is the same color in the map and on the spine.
- Sized to the longest bar, the block itself aligns left / centre / right — separately from the text alignment inside the bars.
| - It's a description, not a control: it doesn't reorder or repeat anything that actually prints.
- It never fills itself in from your sections — you type the running order.
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Info box  Song-level chrome with a placeable twin. The song's own box sits in the header; a placed one goes wherever the facts are needed. | A stanza or a gap — and the song itself, as the header box every chart starts with. | One header box per song. Any number of placed ones — each with its own list of fields. | - The count-in facts where the band looks first: tempo, time signature, key, capo.
- A second box beside the bridge, saying the one fact that changes there.
| - Not a text box full of typed facts. An info row reads the song's property — change the tempo once, in Basics, and every box that prints it follows. A typed “72 bpm” goes stale silently.
- Not for a sentence. Rows are
prefix + value pairs, not prose. Prose is a Text box.
| - It prints any song property, in the order you drag the rows into, each with its own prefix — or none.
- A row whose property is empty simply doesn't print, so one layout survives a half-filled song.
- Presets fill it in one press: Standard · Rhythm · Key & capo · Release · People · Catalogue.
- In a gap it owns its rows and opens real space; beside a stanza it floats and reserves nothing.
| - It shows what the song already knows — you can't type a value into it here; that's the Basics panel.
- The header box's page rule has no last: it reserves layout room, so it prints on the first page, every page, or the rest.
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QR code  Song-level chrome with a placeable twin — the same pairing as the info box and the capo. | A stanza or a gap. The song's own QR is chrome and belongs to the whole chart. | One song QR, deriving its link from the song's Video property. Any number of placed ones, each carrying its own URL. | - A reference recording one scan away from the stand.
- A second code near the bridge pointing at something else entirely — the solo you're copying, the lyric sheet.
| - Not for a link people will retype. A URL somebody has to copy by hand wants the video link's text form, which can print a short URL.
- Not a decoration. It is a square the size of three lyric lines, and in a gap it books that room.
| - Sized in body rows, so it keeps its proportion to the music at every font size.
- Carries its own link — independent of the song's Video property.
- Code fill leaves a margin inside its box, which is where a backing color and a frame get to show.
- Drag a corner to resize; it lands on the nearer grid line.
| - The logo and the colors are song-level, not per code — one chart can't print marked and unmarked codes side by side.
- In a gap it owns
ceil(rows) rows of real page room; beside a stanza it reserves nothing and floats.
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| Boxes you place Content rather than a marking: a text box holds words, the two chord boxes hold chords. You put them where you want them — hugging a stanza, centred in a gap, or floating free over the page. |
Text box  Free-form content. A resizable frame of styled text that reserves no page room and reflows nothing. | A stanza or a gap — but only as a holder. It floats above the music, and can be pinned to the page instead. | Unlimited. Any number, on any holder. | - A paragraph the band reads once — the intro count, the road note, what happens after the last chorus.
- Anything that is prose rather than a marking: a translation, a caption, a heading, a rehearsal reminder.
| - It is the jack of all trades — which is the reason to reach past it. A box reading “Chorus ×2” is a sentence; a Repeat is a count. Use the typed annotation when one exists, and the box for what's left.
- A short label beside one line is a Cue chip: it snaps to the character grid, hugs the text, and opens the gap room it needs. A text box does none of that — it floats.
- Room in the layout is Blank space. A text box never pushes the music anywhere; it sits on top of it, so you place it in space you have already made.
| - The only annotation that is a resizable frame — drag any of its four sides or corners and the opposite edge stays put.
- Rich text: select a range and make it bold, italic, underlined, or a color of its own.
- Its own point size, an optional fill (with opacity) and border, four reading directions, and horizontal + vertical alignment inside the frame.
- Pinned to the page it lands at an exact spot — pin one per page at the same position and you have a strip that repeats through the chart.
| - It owns no reserve: it never opens space and never moves the music, so an unplanned box lands on top of the words.
- Nothing reads it. No count, no color meaning, no link to another stanza — it is text in a frame.
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Chord box  Free-form content — chords you type, drawn with the concert box's look, placed by hand. | A stanza or a gap between stanzas. | Unlimited — a stanza or a gap can carry as many as the arrangement needs. | - The shapes for a solo, an intro or a turnaround that has no lyric line to hang chords over.
- An alternative voicing printed beside the written one.
| - Not chords typed into a cue. A chip's text is a string. A chord box gets transposed when the whole song transposes — with *Transpose with main* on, which is the default, it moves in step with the body and the concert box.
- Quoting another stanza's chords is a Linked chord box. Typing a copy freezes it at the moment you typed it.
- Every stanza's sounding chords is the automatic concert box. This is the one you place where you want one.
| - It transposes, and re-measures: a chord that picks up a ♯ simply makes the box wider. What you typed stays stored in the written key.
- Drawn as the concert side box, so a hand-placed box and the automatic one read identically on the page.
- Dropped in a gap it owns its rows — it opens real space at that boundary instead of riding the blank space the way a one-row chip does.
- Drag it, pin it to the page, stack several on one stanza; its box and chord colors are its own.
| - The chords are typed: nothing checks them against the song, and nothing updates them when the part they describe changes.
- It never sits above a stanza or hugs the text edge — a tall box of chords over the lyric reads wrong, so it takes beside-the-stanza and the right gutter.
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Linked chord box  Free-form content anchored in two places at once: it sits where you put it and re-reads a source stanza on every render. | A stanza or a gap — and it points at another stanza's chords. | Unlimited. Two boxes beside one verse, mirroring two different sections, is a real chart — so neither chord box is limited to one per stanza. | - A chordless verse that plays over the chorus changes — show them beside it without retyping.
- An outro that repeats the intro: quote the progression instead of copying it.
| - Not a typed copy. A Chord box you fill by hand is a snapshot — fix a chord in the source verse and the copy still shows the old one. A linked chord box shows another stanza's chords and changes when that source changes.
- Not a Repeat section. A recall brings back the *words* — and, in full-text mode, splices them into the flow. This brings back only the chords, into a box you place.
| - A live reference: edit the source stanza's chords and every box pointing at it updates on its own.
- Re-point it whenever you like from a Source dropdown — the same picker as “Fill chords from…”; nothing else about the box changes.
- It lays the mirrored chords out with the song's own concert alignment and spacing, so it and the concert box read identically.
- It follows the key like the manual box, and the PDF resolves the same reference the preview does.
| - There is no text field: what it shows is entirely the source's business. To differ from the source at all, use a manual Chord box.
- Same placements as the manual box — beside the stanza or the right gutter, or centred in a gap; never above a stanza.
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| Anchored to your lyrics These attach to a stanza, a line, a word range or the boundary between two stanzas — and they move with the words when you edit them. |
Section  Anchored to content — a colored spine with a label running alongside the lines it covers. | One stanza, or a span of stanzas. | One per stanza. Adding again edits the spine that's already there. | - Naming the parts — Intro, Verse 1, Chorus, Bridge, Solo, Outro — so the form is scannable from a stand.
- Color-coding so every chorus looks identical across a busy page.
| - Not a cue used as a title. A cue reading “CHORUS” is a chip parked near a stanza. A section *covers* the lines, groups them, and carries a color that other annotations read.
- Several parallel labels down one stretch of music — who plays what — are Markers. A stanza only takes one spine.
| - Its label is what a Repeat section names itself after: title a stanza “Chorus” and a recall elsewhere reads “Repeat: Chorus”, and follows if you retitle it.
- Spans a run of stanzas as one continuous spine.
- Reading direction is yours: bottom-to-top, top-to-bottom, or upright letters stacked one per line.
- Slides between the left gutter, beside the text, and the right gutter.
| - One per stanza.
- It labels and groups — it doesn't repeat, recall or reorder anything.
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Cue chip  Anchored to content — a small labeled chip pinned where you put it. | A stanza, a single line, or a gap between stanzas. | Unlimited. Any number, anywhere. | - Dynamics and feel — “quiet”, “lift”, “half-time”, “a cappella”.
- Stage directions the dots can't say — “band out”, “watch me”, “repeat to fade”.
| - “Chorus ×2” → Repeat. A repeat bar reads as a count at a glance and stays glued to the stanza when the words move.
- “CHORUS” → Section. “Capo 5” → Capo. “as the chorus” → Repeat section. “Bea sings” → Voice.
- An empty cue pushed in to open a gap → Blank space. The gap is already an object; it has the height knob.
- A paragraph → Text box. A chip is a few words on the grid; a box is a frame you size, style and place. The text box is the jack of all trades, the cue chip the second — reach for the chip when the words belong *beside a line*.
- Rule of thumb: if a typed annotation exists for what you're about to write, write it there instead. The two general-purpose kinds are for what's left over — and that's plenty.
| - Free text: a chip can say anything, multi-line if you need it — and unlike the Text box it snaps to the character grid and books the gap room it needs.
- The widest placement set of any kind — above the stanza, beside the text, beside the whole stanza, hard right; or left / centre / right when it sits in a gap.
- Clamped inside the page however long the label grows.
- Attaches at three levels — a whole stanza, one rendered line, or the boundary between two stanzas.
| - Nothing reads it. No count, no color meaning, no link to another stanza, nothing the road-map can stack — it is text on a chip.
- It can't cover a run of stanzas the way a section spine or a repeat bar can.
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Repeat bar  Anchored to content — a bar in the gutter beside the stanza it counts. | One stanza, or a span of stanzas. | One per stanza. | - A chorus or a riff that runs twice — write the words once, show ×2.
- Keeping the page short instead of duplicating a whole verse.
| - Not “×2” in a cue. That's text; this is a count. The bar is legible from a stand, and it stays on the stanza when you edit the lyrics around it.
- Pointing back at a chorus printed earlier is a Repeat section. A repeat says “play *this* again, here”; a recall says “the chorus goes here”.
| - The ×/x is automatic — you type only the number.
- Covers a run of stanzas as a single bar.
- Slides between the left gutter, beside the stanza and the right gutter.
| - One per stanza.
- It doesn't print anything again — it counts what's already on the page.
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Markers  Anchored to content — a group of narrow labeled bars standing side by side in a page gutter. | One stanza, a span of stanzas, or a gap. | Unlimited — a stanza can carry a left group and a right group, and each group holds as many bars as you like. | - A parts list down the margin: who takes which lines, where the second guitar comes in.
- Landmarks the band calls out, or a compact arrangement running down the edge of the page.
| - One label for one part is a Section. A marker group is a *list*; a list of one is a spine with extra steps.
- The whole song's running order belongs in the Road-map — same bars, stacked in a gap where everyone reads them together, instead of squeezed into a gutter.
| - A group holds many bars, each with its own label, color and optional ×N.
- Bars stand side by side, so several parallel tracks can run down the same stretch of music.
- One reading direction per group — bottom-to-top, top-to-bottom, stacked letters, or normal, which turns the group into a horizontal chip.
- Dropped in a gap it renders like a road-map: full-width stacked bars, one body row each.
| - Vertical labels are narrow — a long one runs the whole height of the stanza.
- It's a label list, not structure: nothing else in the chart reads a marker's text.
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Repeat section  Anchored to content in two places at once: it sits in a boundary and refers to a stanza somewhere above it. | A gap between stanzas — and it points at an earlier stanza. | Unlimited — except before the very first stanza, where there is nothing behind it to recall. | - The chorus comes back a third and fourth time and you'd rather not reprint it every time.
- Fitting a long song onto fewer pages without losing the form.
| - Not a cue reading “chorus here”. That chip looks the same and knows nothing: it points nowhere, it won't follow the chorus if you retitle it, and it can never print the words.
- If the part genuinely plays twice where it stands, that's a Repeat, not a recall.
| - It's a live reference: the mark names itself from the referenced stanza's Section label, so “Repeat: Chorus” tracks the spine you typed.
- Switch on the full text and it splices the recalled stanza's real lines into the page — they flow and paginate like any other content, so a long recall breaks across a page instead of overflowing it.
- You can hide the “Repeat:” chip and show only the recapped text.
- The prefix wording is editable — say it in your language, or your band's.
| - It lives in a gap, so it can't sit beside a stanza the way a chip can.
- It rides its boundary's blank space and books no rows of its own — the gap's height is the knob that gives it room.
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Voice (color)  Anchored to content — it draws no widget at all; it recolors the words themselves. | A stanza, one line, or a word range inside a line. | Unlimited: one per line, plus any number of word ranges. | - Duets and call-and-response — “you take this line, I take that”.
- Marking harmony against lead, or handing one phrase mid-line to the other singer.
| - Not a cue reading “Bea sings”. That names one spot. A voice colors every line that person sings, right through the chart, in a color the band already recognizes.
- Recoloring for looks rather than for a singer belongs in Color themes. Voices mean *people* — the voice legend prints them as such.
| - It colors a word range, not just a line — a singer can change mid-lyric.
- Two-tier: each song owns its roster, and your personal My Voices catalog follows you across devices. Where a song defines a voice, the song wins.
- The voice legend prints a key on the page — one row per voice the song actually uses, updating itself as you tag lines.
- Costs no page room: no chip, no bar, no reserved rows.
| - It has no text and no color of its own — the voice supplies both.
- It reads as color, so a grayscale print flattens the distinction.
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| Layout & flow Not markings at all — these two decide how much room the music gets and where the page turns. |
Blank space  Layout. The gap is a real object that is already there — the one element you never have to add. | The gap between two stanzas (and the space before the first / after the last). | At least one at every gap, and it can't be removed. Add more from the gap's right-click menu so a boundary holds several slots. | - A breath before the chorus, or room for the player to move the capo.
- Letting a short song fill the page instead of huddling at the top, or opening a chart up so it still reads at arm's length.
| - Don't stack space to force a page turn. That's a Page break — a pile of hand-tuned rows collapses the moment the font size or line spacing changes.
- Don't type an empty cue to open a gap. The gap itself is the vertical knob; an invisible chip is a workaround for a control you already have.
| - The words and the space stay in step both ways: three blank lines in the Song Editor render as three lines of space, and dragging the gap taller writes those blank lines back into the source.
- Drag the bottom edge to resize a line at a time, up to twelve.
- Several can stack at one boundary, each with its own row in the Layers panel, reorderable against a chip sitting there.
- Normalize flattens every gap in the song back to a single line, in one undoable step.
| - The last space at a gap can't be removed — that one line is what makes two stanzas two stanzas. Merging verses is an edit to the words.
- A gap that lands exactly on a page break collapses: the turn is already a bigger pause than any blank line.
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Page break  Layout & flow. It changes pagination and draws nothing on the page. | A gap between stanzas. | One per gap. | - Putting the turn where your hands are free, instead of mid-chorus.
- Keeping a section whole on one page.
| - Not a pile of Blank space. Pushing a stanza over the edge by height is the common workaround, and it comes undone with the next font or page-preset change. A break is a decision, not an accident of measurement.
- To open room at the top of the new page, use the break's own space after knob — a spacer at that boundary renders its rows at the *bottom* of the previous page, before the break, where they hold nothing.
| - Forces the split exactly where you put it; GigCharts paginates everything else around it.
- Opens up to three blank body rows at the top of the page it creates — room for a cue chip or a capo pill in the one spot nothing else can reach.
| - Zero to three rows of top room, and no more.
- A break before the first stanza forces nothing, so it opens nothing either.
- It draws nothing — check the result in the preview, not on the control.
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