Learn · lesson 2 of 7

Split bars and beat marks

How do you write two chords in one bar?

Two chords, half each

Two numbers side by side could be two bars. What makes them one bar is the line drawn under them: it groups the chords, so a reader on a stand sees at a glance that the two share a bar rather than taking one each. Each takes half of it, two beats each in 4/4. If a single number in a bar is still new, Reading a chart comes first.

The second bar is 4 then 5, the third is 6m then 5, two beats each.

Even is the default reading of a split. With no other mark on the bar, the chords share it equally.

The underline is the common way to group a split, but not the only one. Some charts draw a box around the chords instead, and some use parentheses. They all mean the same thing. NNScharts stores the split itself and draws the line or the box. Pick which under “Read it your way” on any chart, or in the editor’s Display settings. Once you pick, every chart you open uses it.

When the split is not even

Three beats of 1 and one beat of 5 is different music from two and two. The band lands on the 5 a beat later, the bass player walks somewhere else, and the singer hears a different pickup into the next bar. Written as two numbers under a line, the two bars look identical.

Beat marks are the fix. Most charts call them hash marks. One short mark sits over a chord for every beat it gets: three over the 1, one over the 5. Read them like a count.

The first bar is 3+1. The third is 2+1+1.

Three chords in four beats can never be even, so a three-way split in 4/4 needs marks. You do not have to mark every chord, though. Write the three over the 1 and the 5 takes what is left; the chart fills in the single mark over the 5, so the reader sees a whole bar counted rather than a half-finished one. Marking a 2 and 2 is allowed too.

Where the marks go varies by writer. Some put them above the numbers and some below. Some draw ticks, some draw dots. Other charts skip the marks and write real note values over the numbers instead, a dotted half and a quarter for 3+1. Note values are an add-on to the number system, and they say more than a mark does. A mark counts beats and says nothing about rhythm. NNScharts stores the count and draws the marks above the numbers, and because the count is all it keeps, a 3+1 bar in G is still a 3+1 bar in B♭.

Four chords and a walkdown

A bar holds as many chords as it has beats. Four in 4/4 is one beat each, and since that is even there is nothing to mark. A common reason to write four is a bass line: the harmony stays close to home while the bass walks down underneath it, and each step gets its own slash chord.

1, then 1 over 7, then 6m, then 1 over 5, one beat each. The bass walks 1 – 7 – 6 – 5 and lands on the 4.

The slash chord itself, a number over the bass degree it sits on, is covered with the other qualities in Chord qualities and slash chords. What matters here is that each chord of a split bar can be anything a whole bar can: a minor, a seventh, a slash. A diamond on one chord of a split holds that chord for its share of the bar, not for the whole bar.

In 3/4

The marks count beats, so they follow the time signature. In 3/4 two chords cannot share a bar evenly. The split is 2+1 or 1+2, and it needs marks.

In 3/4: two beats of 4 and one of 5. The time signature is in the header, and the marks count against it.

NNScharts counts 6/8 in eighths, so the bar holds six and the same rule holds. In every meter:

Shares equal: write the chords under a line and nothing else.
Shares unequal: a mark over each chord for every beat it gets.
Not sure whether it is even: mark it.

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Every example on this page is a real chart, drawn by the same renderer that draws the library. If the notation here looks like the notation there, that is not a coincidence. It is the same code.