Generate Guitar Chords with PHP

Many sites provides guitar chords/tabs in a text format and these can be little hard to read sometimes. Here's a quick article on how to generate an image of a guitar chords in PHP.

First, you will have to get these two files:

• arial.ttf
• Guitar Template

Then, create a PHP script (call it chords.php) with the following code:

define('IMAGE_EXT', '.jpg');
define('PATH', './');

function generateChords($chord, $filename) {
  $imgfile = PATH . 'guitar.jpg';
  $text = '.';
  $font = PATH . 'arial.ttf';

  $im = imagecreatefromjpeg($imgfile);
  $x = imagesx($im);
  $y = imagesy($im);
  $fontsize = 100;
  $white = imagecolorallocate($im, 0, 0, 0);

  $chords = explode('-', $chord);
  // chords[0] = e1 and chords[5] = e6

  $minimum = min($chords);
  imagettftext($im, 15, 0, 1, 32, $white, $font, $minimum);
  $add = 0;
  if($minimum > 0) {
    $add = 30;
  }
  // chords positions
  $interval1 = ($chords[0] != 0 ? (25 + $add + (intval($chords[0]) - $minimum) * 30) : 0);
  $interval2 = ($chords[1] != 0 ? (25 + $add + (intval($chords[1]) - $minimum) * 30) : 0);
  $interval3 = ($chords[2] != 0 ? (25 + $add + (intval($chords[2]) - $minimum) * 30) : 0);
  $interval4 = ($chords[3] != 0 ? (25 + $add + (intval($chords[3]) - $minimum) * 30) : 0);
  $interval5 = ($chords[4] != 0 ? (25 + $add + (intval($chords[4]) - $minimum) * 30) : 0);
  $interval6 = ($chords[5] != 0 ? (25 + $add + (intval($chords[5]) - $minimum) * 30) : 0);

  // write to the image
  imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, 01, $interval1, $white, $font, $text);
  imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, 18, $interval2, $white, $font, $text);
  imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, 36, $interval3, $white, $font, $text);
  imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, 53, $interval4, $white, $font, $text);
  imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, 70, $interval5, $white, $font, $text);
  imagettftext($im, $fontsize, 0, 86, $interval6, $white, $font, $text);
  imagejpeg($im, $filename);
}

if(!isset($_GET['chord']) || substr_count($_GET['chord'], '-') != 5) {
  $_GET['chord'] = '0-0-0-0-0-0';
}
$filename = PATH . $_GET['chord'] . IMAGE_EXT;
if(!file_exists($filename)) {
  generateChords($_GET['chord'], $filename);
}
header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
readfile($filename);
ImageDestroy($im);

On your HTML page you simply call like this:

<img src="chords.php?chord=1-3-3-1-1-1" alt="chord 1-3-3-1-1-1" width="125" height="306" />

This will output: