Move, split, insert and remove chords

Sometimes the right chord sits in the wrong place: it changes a beat late, two chords were heard as one, or a chord the analysis missed needs to be added. All of that is done on the chord lane of the timeline, under the video, where every chord is a capsule as long as it lasts.

Before you start

• Open the project in the editor once its analysis has finished.
• Zoom in on the part you’re fixing: press S to zoom in and A to zoom out. The bar numbers along the top of the timeline help you find your place.
• Hear the spot first. Click the timeline to move the playhead there and press Space to play.

Steps

Move where a chord starts or ends

1. Click the chord’s capsule. It is picked, with a grip on each end.
2. Drag a grip left or right. A tag over it says the bar and beat you are on.
3. Let go. The chord next to it moves with that edge, so no gap opens between them.

The edge snaps to the nearest line of the beat grid drawn at this zoom (zoom in for finer steps). Hold Shift while you drag to put it exactly where the pointer is.

To move the boundary between two chords without picking either, hold ⌘ (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows), point at the line between them and drag.

Split a chord in two

1. Put the playhead where the new chord should start. Q and W step it back and on along the beats.
2. Press X, or right-click the chord and choose Split at playhead.
3. The right half is picked. Press C to give it its name (fix a chord).

Insert a chord the analysis missed

1. Point at the line between two chords. A plus appears.
2. Click the plus. A new chord goes in right there, a beat long, and the chord after it starts that much later.
3. FlowChord names it with the likeliest chord for that spot and picks it, so you can rename it at once.

A stretch with no chord, a pause included, is left empty, as in the lyrics lane. Point at it and a plus and the time appear: click to put a chord there. From the keyboard, Insert chord after (I) adds one after the chord you picked.

Add a pause

1. Right-click the chord before the pause.
2. Choose Insert pause after.
3. A stretch of No chord goes in after it, picked. Drag its grips to make it as long as the pause. Once you pick something else, the pause shows as an empty stretch, like any time with no chord.

Remove a chord

1. Click the chord to pick it.
2. Press Delete, or press Not a chord — remove on its card.
3. Its time is left empty: no chord there, and when the empty stretch lasts a couple of seconds or more, the chords leave the video there. To fill it, click the empty stretch to add a chord, or drag the next chord’s grip over it.

Copy a run of chords to another part of the song

1. Click the first chord of the run, then hold Shift and click the last one. All of them are ringed.
2. Press ⌘ C (Mac) or Ctrl C (Windows).
3. Click the chord where the run should start. A dashed band shows where the paste will go.
4. Press ⌘ V (Mac) or Ctrl V (Windows).

The paste keeps the run’s rhythm: it covers as many beats as the copied chords lasted, whatever chords were there before, and nothing outside that stretch moves. It is one step to undo.

Options

Keys on the timeline

Key	What it does
A / S	Zoom out / zoom in around the playhead, which stays in the middle of the timeline, or as close as the start or end of the song allows.
Q / W	Playhead one step back / on, along the beat lines drawn at this zoom.
1 / 2	Playhead to the start of the previous / next chord.
3 / 4	Playhead to the start / end of the cut.
X	Splits the chord under the playhead, exactly there.
⌥ ← / →	Nudges the picked chord’s start a little (Alt on Windows). Add Shift to nudge its end.
Delete	Removes the picked chord.

Moving the playhead with these keys never starts playback. The full list is in keyboard shortcuts.

Where the video changes chord

On the video, the chord band starts moving to the next chord a moment before the line between two capsules, and it settles exactly on that line: from the edge on, the new chord is still and its fingering can be read. A thin line along the foot of the chord lane shows each of these slides. It starts where the video begins to move and ends on the edge. So put each edge where the new chord should be in place, on the strum it is played on, and the video will show it there, in the editor and in the exported video alike.

Exact times

Right-click a chord and choose Edit timing (T) to type its Starts at and Ends at times. Typed times are kept as you type them, without snapping to the beat.

Replace a chord by dragging

Drag one chord’s capsule onto another: while you hold it, the timeline shows what the drop will do, and letting go replaces the chord under it with the one you carried.

Tips

• Let your ears decide: right-click a chord and choose Play chord (P) to hear it alone after each change.
• Every change is one step to undo with ⌘ Z (Mac) or Ctrl Z (Windows).
• A split, an inserted chord, a removed chord or a moved start or end also goes where the same chords come back, as a renamed chord does (when the passage comes back).
• A chord the analysis heard where none is played tends to turn up all over the song, not only where the same chords come back. When you remove one, the line at the bottom of the Timeline also offers every other chord with that name that lasts no longer: press Apply to all, untick any you want to keep and press Apply to clear the song of it in one step.
• A chord you want to keep on the timeline but not on the video can be hidden instead of removed: Hide from video (H).
• If the same passage repeats, fix it once and copy it over the others: the paste follows the song’s beats even if the tempo drifts a little.

Common problems

No chord under the playhead to split. The playhead isn’t inside a chord. Move it onto the chord first.

Too close to the chord’s edge to split. One of the halves would be too short. Move the playhead further from the chord’s edge.

The edge won’t go any further. A chord can’t get shorter than a small minimum, so an edge stops before it squeezes its neighbour away. Remove the neighbour first if it shouldn’t be there.

The edge jumps to the beat when I want it between beats. Hold Shift while dragging, or type the time under Edit timing.

Dragging a chord replaced another one. Dropping a chord on another one replaces it. Undo with ⌘ Z (Mac) or Ctrl Z (Windows), and drag the grips instead to change timing.

No plus appears after the last chord. There’s no room after a chord that runs to the end of the song. Shorten it first, then insert.