A chord chart is a navigation tool. It's a way for the composer to chart out musical phrases and notate where chord changes occur.

It can be anywhere from 2-bars to 200 bars or more depending on how long the composition is or how many bars it takes to notate a musical idea.

For example, in the piece "Egrets," we have an 8-bar phrase with chord changes on top. This is a chord chart. It tells the performer where the chord changes occur, what the melody is, and when to change chords. This is all that is necessary to create a full arrangement of the music.

We don't need to write out every single note. We use the chord changes to create fresh arrangements of how we want the music to sound.

Notice that the first 2-bars of melody are written out. This was the initial idea. I then drew out 8-bars and finished by putting the chord changes on top. Now, whenever I want to play this little piece, I can play the initial melody and the whole thing comes together.

Of course, I could have written the whole thing out note for note, but this would have taken 30 times as long as just notating where the chords change.

Another benefit of this method is that the music is left elastic and fluid - that is, the aliveness of the music comes to you each and every time you play it. Why? Because each and every note is not written out. You can play it a little differently each time and each time the music will speak a little differently to you.