Leganote: Guitar Chord Charts

Made by a solo dev because nothing else felt right. Chord charts, lead sheets, PDFs, and a backing-track player. $5.99 once. No subscription. Ever.

A chord chart app for practicing musicians. Lead sheets, ChordPro, MusicXML, PDFs, and a backing-track player — all in one songbook on your iPhone and iPad. $5.99 once. No subscription. Ever.

Hey — Leganote is the app I wished existed.

I'm zhi, a solo dev. I built it in evenings and weekends because I was tired of paying yearly fees for music tools I just want to own — and tired of "lifetime" apps that quietly turned into yearly plans. So I made my own. $5.99 unlocked on every iPhone and iPad on your Apple ID, including everyone in your Family. No subscription, no trial, no ads, no upsell screens.

— What it does

Chord charts and lead sheets that look the way they should. Handwritten chord symbols, section markers, repeats and 1./2. endings. Tap a bar, type a chord. Drag to reorder sections.

A backing-track player so you can practice without booking a band. Drums, bass, and SoundFont piano + guitar all playing along. Live transpose at the next bar boundary. Tempo control without changing pitch.

A light PDF reader for charts you didn't write yourself. Apple Pencil works on it.

— Practice tools

A-B loop a tricky section. Tempo Ramp gradually steps the BPM up each time the loop comes around. Metronome with quarter, 8th, triplet, 16th, and shuffle subdivisions. Bass, ukulele, guitar, and piano fingering diagrams — long-press a chord to pick a different voicing.

— Open formats only

Import ChordPro for free, MusicXML with Pro. Open PDF charts straight from the Files app. Export to MusicXML or print to PDF. Your songs leave with you.

— Your library lives in your iCloud Drive

In your own iCloud Drive, under a folder named Leganote. There's no Leganote server — I genuinely don't have one. There's no account because there's nothing to log in to. If you uninstall the app tomorrow, your files stay right where you put them.

— Free vs Pro

The editor is free. So are the player, the metronome, A-B loop, ChordPro import, the PDF viewer, and bass + ukulele fingering diagrams. You get two ready-to-play starter songs (Amazing Grace and When the Saints Go Marching In) plus one slot for your own creation or import.

$5.99 unlocks Pro: an unlimited library, every bundled starter song (Bill Bailey, Pachelbel Canon, Twelve-Bar Blues in F, Tico-Tico no Fubá and more), Tempo Ramp practice, Apple Pencil PDF annotation, guitar and piano fingering diagrams, and MusicXML import + export.

— zhi