Best place for Chord Charts and Lead Sheets

[rcflyer23]

I just recently took on the Worship Leader position at our church and I know we have a Current CCLI license but it doesn't look like we have the Song Select Service yet, I'm going to start working on that, so I was just curious where you get your chord charts/lead sheets from. I know there are a ton of places out there that have them, but I want to make sure if I have to get them from somewhere other than CCLI for the time being that it's all legit and accurate.

[ryanrotman]

I think Song Select is definitely the best place to find them. You know they're actually correct. The other good place to look is on digital song books. Integrity Music does a lot for their artists' albums, but there are others out there. worshiptogether.com is also another good place. They highlight a few songs on a rotation and offer charts of those songs. They usually are highlighting current songs that are coming out.

[e.andersen]

Song Select is a great place to go. Definitely worth the money.

One other place you might want to consider is PraiseCharts.com. Most of their basic rhythm charts and chord charts are very inexpensive. You can get full orchestrations, Finale files and more as well if you need them. I've used several of their click tracks at times and it works really well. In addition, they just redesigned their web site and they're giving away a ton of charts for free:

PraiseCharts | Download Free Sheet Music & Worship Songs

[rcflyer23]

Thanks for the replies and the link. Yeah I am going to really push for Song Select if it comes down to it I will come out of pocket for it. I will check out PraiseCharts and worshiptogether, I have been to WT before but it's been a while.

Thank you....

[efrisch]

I've been using PraiseCharts for over 5 years now and it is an excellent resource. We use their Gold Light plan (which I think is about $120 a year) and get almost all of our chord charts (as well as our click tracks) from them. Great value.

[Stephen Nettles]

maybe i'm too DIY but I would never ever pay to find chord charts. Just use ultimateguitar.com or another site like that. there are some dedicated just to worship music but frankly ulitimate guitar gets the job done better most of the time. You'll need to double check it yourself to make sure its right. its not that hard... if it sounds wrong.... it probably is. but 90 percent of the time that site is correct...... and free...... why should companies charge for chords? its kinda messed up if you ask me.

as far as click tracks go (i saw someone mention them) as long as you can figure out the tempo your self you can create them using audacity.... which is free.

[rcflyer23]

I've been using PraiseCharts for over 5 years now and it is an excellent resource. We use their Gold Light plan (which I think is about $120 a year) and get almost all of our chord charts (as well as our click tracks) from them. Great value.

I've started using PraiseCharts as well. I like having both Song Select and PraiseCharts in combination. There have been a few things that Song Select didn't have. Lately we have been using them as a base and redoing them to our liking. I'll probably do the PraiseCharts annual service next year in addition to Song Select. I like the fact that Praise Charts includes the Chord Shapes.

[mikeymo1741]

I Will Worship is a great site for finding user-created charts for worship songs. I like it because the charts are simple ASCII text files, and I can import them right into OpenSong, which makes them available for projection as well as printing.

Of course, with any crowdsourced resource, you have to be careful of the accuracy, but most of them are pretty good. SongSelect is still the best source, and I second PraiseCharts as well. The main problem with SongSelect is that you sometimes cannot find the proper arrangements if you are looking for a cover version of a song, as they generally list the original arrangement. I Will Worship will often have multiple versions.

[betnich]

All the resources mentioned above are good.

But I am extremely DIY; when it comes to chord charts, I find myself customizing chords on almost every one. SongSelect is good for lead sheets to get the melody down, and offers transposable songs. But I cannot find about a seventh of the songs we do on it. Another third has the CCLI# listing and/or lyrics, but not sheet music or chords chart. So I go elsewhere: either Google the song title and "lyrics" or "chord chart" or just listen to the audio/video and do it myself.

In the course of the past year some people have left our Praise Team and we seem to be going in a more Smooth Jazz/Urban direction. This is our Pastor's preference (and mine) but even when doing a CCM standard such as "Here I am to Worship" I find myself "Phattening" up the chords on the fly. So am considering renewing the church's CCLI license but dropping SongSelect, since we don't get a lot of our new songs from it anyway...

[CynthMel]

I use CCLI, however I find that they sometimes have wrong chords in there or they take a song that can be written out in one or two pages and make it a four page song. So then I just go into Finale and end up rewriting it myself.