Choosing a Text Page Format

Choose a format based on whether you read lyrics alone, play chords alongside the lyrics, or follow bars and repeats. Plain Text, Markdown, ChordPro, and Fumen all let you build pages by typing text.

If you already have a PDF or photographed score, you do not need to rewrite it in one of these notations. Import it directly into the Score Library.

Quick Choice

If unsure, write just a verse or four bars and check it in the Text Page Editor Preview. Decide whether chords line up where you need them and whether explicit barlines matter. Changing the format does not automatically rewrite the source into another notation. Duplicate an existing chart before trying a different format.

Plain Text

Plain Text is the simplest format. It uses only characters and line breaks, without interpreting markup.

It works well for lyrics-only pages, short performance notes, and running orders that do not need heading levels or special chord positioning. Its advantage is that there is no notation to learn and typed symbols are not reinterpreted as markup.

Markdown

Markdown is useful when you want to organize text with headings and lists and emphasize selected passages. It can combine lyrics, rehearsal reminders, MC notes, stage directions, and checklists on one page.

PagePilot Viewer displays headings, bulleted and numbered lists, task lists, bold, italics, strikethrough, block quotes, and tables. Its support is based on GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), with PagePilot Viewer-specific underline and color markup added. Links are displayed as text, but tapping one in Preview or the Score Viewer does not open the destination.

ChordPro

ChordPro places chord tokens such as [C] at matching positions in the lyrics, then displays the chords above those lyrics. It is useful when lyrics are the main content and the player also needs chords and song information.

PagePilot Viewer handles title and subtitle; key, BPM or tempo, time signature, and capo; comments; Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Tab, and Grid sections; page breaks; and transpose directives in the source. It can also transpose the chords together and offers PagePilot and ChordWiki display presets. For vocal accompaniment, singer-guitarist charts, and band songs where players follow the lyrics, the chord-to-lyric relationship is easy to read and the chart is easy to adapt to a new key.

PagePilot Viewer supports a subset of the ChordPro specification. Other directives are displayed as comments. Arbitrary section types and nested sections are not supported. ChordWiki is a display preset for ChordPro, not a separate text page format.

Fumen

Fumen is a text-based chord chart format that can express measure boundaries, durations, rests, repeats, and navigation marks as well as chords. It is most useful when a band or session group needs to share the musical roadmap rather than read lyrics.

PagePilot Viewer bundles Fumen v1.3.3 and supports its public notation. Chords, barlines, time signatures, durations, rests, syncopation, alternate endings, simile marks, Segno, Coda, and D.S./D.C. can all live in one source. For example, a chart can describe a four-measure progression, repeat it with a different ending, and direct the player back to Segno with D.S. See the official Fumen documentation and official cheat sheet for notation details.

In the Score Viewer, turning on the metronome outlines the current bar. Repeats and D.S./D.C. are expanded in playing order. If PagePilot cannot resolve a complex route safely, it leaves the highlight off while keeping the Fumen score itself visible.

Start with the copyable examples on the PagePilot website: a four-measure progression followed by an example with A/B sections and a repeat. The sources contain no Japanese text. Fumen's Structure explains measures and rows, Chords lists chord symbols, and the Playground lets you edit the official examples in a browser.

Whole-chart transposition uses Fumen's official %KEY and %TRANSPOSE directives. The chord body remains in the original key, while Preview, the Score Viewer, and PDF export show the transposed chords. Explicit staff pitches outside chord symbols do not transpose, so PagePilot Viewer asks for confirmation when they are present. See Transpose for details.

Fumen does not replace a conventional score or rhythm chart with melody, staves, and detailed articulation or rhythm. Use a PDF, image, or a score created from MusicXML for that material. ChordPro is usually simpler when the main requirement is matching chords to lyrics.

Fumen does not let you change font size, line spacing, or page margins in Adjust display. It uses white A4 pages, one logical page per image. Check Preview from your playing distance to see whether you can distinguish the bars you need. To make chord labels and extensions easier to read, use the %PARAM options below.

Change chord display and bar numbers

Add bar numbers for rehearsal directions such as “from bar 9”, or change chord labels to the notation you recognize. These options come from a patch supported by PagePilot Viewer in addition to Fumen v1.3.3. Put %PARAM at the start of the source and check Preview.

%PARAM={"minor_label":"m","major_label":"M","diminished_label":"dim","half_diminished_label":"m7-5","augmented_label":"aug","chord_suffix_style":"inline"}
| Am7(#11)/C | AM7/E | Cdim7 | Cm7-5 | Caug |

Inline styling also covers extensions, alterations, parentheses, and right-hand slash bass notes. A bass note placed below with on_bass_style: "below" stays below. Use "compact" if you only want to change the labels. The source spelling stays the same: selecting "aug" renders C+ as Caug.

Add %PARAM={"bar_number":"on"} to show performance-order bar numbers at every rendered row start. bar_start changes the first number; use {"bar_number":"on","bar_start":0} to number a pickup as bar zero. The setting at the first measure is used once, and repeat visits are listed together, such as 1,9.

Choose Templates → Display and chord notation → Chord display example to add a basic %PARAM example. It is added after the last line starting with %, or at the top followed by a blank line if there is no setting line. The cursor moves to the new line's end. Cheat sheet lets you read syntax examples without changing the source. No plug-in installation is needed. If %PARAM={...} already exists, edit that JSON object instead of inserting another template. Remove the added keys or restore their defaults to return to the original display.

These options change the display, not the chord syntax or musical meaning. They apply to Preview, the Score Viewer, and PDF export. PagePilot Viewer's Fumen PDFs contain rendered page images.

These options come from an independently distributed patch, not the upstream Fumen standard. Tools without the patch may ignore them and use the original notation style. The upstream Playground may therefore look different.

Write on your computer, play from PagePilot Viewer

Fumen Language Support for VS Code is provided by Katsushi Kawato, the developer of PagePilot Viewer. It offers syntax highlighting, setting and symbol completion, templates, offline live previews, and English/Japanese notation guides for .fumen files. It supports the chord-display and bar-number options above.

Search VS Code Extensions for @id:kawato3.fumen-language-support, install it, and save your chart as a .fumen file. Transfer the file to your tablet and import it into PagePilot Viewer. Importing does not establish automatic synchronization. Page settings can differ, so check Preview in PagePilot Viewer before playing.

The extension is optional: you can write and edit charts entirely in PagePilot Viewer. It is an independent product, not an official Fumen extension. See the extension guide for details.

Characters outside Japanese and Latin

Which typeface draws your text depends on the format.

The bundled PlemolJP HS covers Japanese and Latin together, but it carries no Hangul, Simplified Chinese, Thai, Devanagari, Arabic, or Hebrew. Writing those characters in ChordPro draws them with a typeface the device provides instead. Nothing disappears, but typefaces are mixed and the monospaced grid no longer lines up.

Scores built from MusicXML and annotation text labels do draw those scripts from bundled typefaces. ChordPro does not, because its body text uses a monospaced typeface.

The formats that use a device typeface — Fumen, Plain Text, and Markdown — display anything the device itself carries. Those typefaces differ per device, so the same source can wrap lines and break pages differently on iPad and on Android.

• To keep the ChordPro body in one typeface, you can write that part in Latin script. Before performing, still check wrapping and page breaks on the tablet you will use.
• If you want to keep your own language, tell the developer which language you need. It informs what typefaces the app should let you add.

For the character coverage of scores built from MusicXML, see Library.

If Your Chosen Format Does Not Display as Intended

If chords such as [C] appear literally, check that the format is ChordPro. Use Fumen for barlines and repeats, or Markdown for headings and lists.

The format determines how the source is read. Switching alone does not convert notation from another format. If the result becomes hard to read, return to the previous format and match the source notation to it. See Text Page Editor for the operation and its effects on other uses of the page.