This post is to share a musician’s cheat sheet I put together for the song “I Wanna Be Loved By You,” which most people know from Marilyn Monroe’s version in the movie “Some Like it Hot.” I’m not sharing this because I think that other people want to get the music from me. I’m sharing it because formatting cheat sheets for musicians is tricky, and I put enough sweat into this one that other people might find it interesting. While you’re reading this you’ll probably want to open that document in another window so that you can flip back and forth: it is at http://soupgreens.com/misc/IWannaBeLovedByYou/.
The title of the song is aligned on the right side of the page, so that you can bind or staple all your cheat sheets on the left side and still see the title when you’re flipping through the stack. Usually you do that flipping in the 30 seconds between one song and the next, and if you can’t find the page you’re really hosed.
If you open this in the browser, you’ll get a link to a printable PDF version in the upper left. I produced the printable version by saving to file. I did that so I wouldn’t have to fiddle with differences between browsers in how they handle formatting at print time.
If you open the PDF, or print from the HTML, the link to the PDF will have been replaced with the URL of the HTML file. That’s to let people who only have the printout get back to the original, which is helpful for making more printouts, for having something to link to, or grabbing and modifying the cheat sheet itself.
The HTML for the chords uses an HTML table to keep things aligned. Whether this is really tabular data is questionable but not totally out of the question.
Rather than align the chords and words within the same block, as sheet music does, I put the chords and words in separate sections and line them up using the section labels “A” and “B.”
The layout is designed for printing it out to use in a live situation. It will fit into a single 8 1/2″ x 11″ page, because players can’t hassle with page turns. The font is as big as possible, because in a live situation the lighting is usually low and the page is down on the floor. Still, instrumentalists would benefit from formatting that is nothing but chords and arrangement, all with a huge font.
The “pooh pooh be doo” lyrics require different chords than in the table ( IV IV IV# V ), but I couldn’t think of an easy-to-read way to express that. That’ll have to be picked up on the fly.
I specified the chords using numbers, in the Nashville style, rather than chord names. This is to make it easy to transpose the song for the benefit of the singer. Otherwise you have to rewrite all the chord names when the key is too high or low for the singer. More on Nashville chord numbering: here and here.
If you have the technical background to edit HTML, you may find that my HTML is a useful template when you need to write out cheat sheets for yourself. My HTML is in the public domain — do whatever you want with it. But if you make an improvement, it would be good to share it with the world and to let me know.
Talking about the public domain brings up the issue of licensing for this song. I obviously don’t have permission to post this composition. However I do have a legal justification: I’m posting for the purpose of scholarship, which is a fair use defense.