Localized chord names
What about introducing the possibility to localize chord names?
In Italy (and AFAIK in Spanish) Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si are used. In French, I think, Ut Re Mi Fa..., in German (and maybe in other countries) H is used instead of B; I imagine Greek, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese use or may use non-Latin strings.
I believe current chord root names are hard-coded in harmony.cpp.
As other parts of the names are read from external XML files (chords.xml, jazzchords.xml, stdchords.xml; incidentally: which does what?), it would make sense to read the root strings from them too, so national communities could prepare local versions of these files.
In addition, it would be useful to localize the harmonyedit.ui dialogue box, but I assume this is part of the general localization process.
On a different but related point, I do not think localization should affect the string returned by the scripting Note.name property API, to leave scripting independent of localized versions.
Thanks,
M.
Comments
German chord names are already supported. There is a style settings for that.
0.9.6 is due in the coming weeks and there is a string freeze for the moment. But I agree it's a good idea for next version.
Okidoky!
M.
(P.S.: About German names, if you say so, I'll trust you. But, notwithstanding the "Use German names" check box, I did not find a way to make an 'H' to show up.)
I may be wrong, but I think, the international chord names are in 'English' - more precisely 'American' - regardless of the 'native' language of the score. Although occasionally you see 'walking pace', 'softly' or 'plucked' (or their equivalent in other languages); a musician is expected to be familiar with such traditional expressions as 'andante', 'piano' or 'pizzicato'. Similarly, chord symbols derived from the practice of jazz - and as such, became standard. Music, and music notation have developed in such a way that musicians have an international 'symbolic language' on which they can communicate. Would it not be counterproductive if jazz players used different chord names in a jam session? Is it realy so difficult for a (for instance, a German) musician to get used call the dominant chord of E major 'B seven' rather than 'H septim'?
In reply to I may be wrong, but I think, by drikanb
I agree that the majority of sheet music is now engraved with chords CDEFGAB.
But I have seen a lot of old french sheet music (from 1920 - 1960) with chordnames "Do/Ut ré mi fa sol la si" and often the chord names are between the two staves of the grand piano system. See attachment.
In reply to I agree that the majority of by [DELETED] 5
Yes, it has some nostalgic value to see music written in the past.These features are consistent with the values regarded highly in those days (eg. 'un peu retenu' - instead of 'un poco ritenuto' - in Debussy scores).
But today, everything tends to be standardised - sometimes without any consistence. The inch, pound, the pint have given way to metric untis - while the travelling speed of aeroplanes (and even spacecrafts) is expressed in knots.....
The above discussion is interesting.
However, I think MuseScore should not be prescriptive, i.e. it should not say "THIS is the right way to do that thing". There might be other ways which are used (or were used) by some and are as much legitimate: I think a notation programme should attempt to accommodate all of them, if possible (nobody uses musica ficta or chromatica anymore, but MuseScore allows [to some extent] to publish scores according those conventions, if needed).
Jazzpersons use 'American' chord names all over the world? This may be true, but chord names are not only used by jazzpersons. I may want to write some exercises on harmony, some analysis of older music and so on (ok, I could use staff text, but then what the chord name machinery is here for?).
So, the above discussion may say something about the priority of the issue, not if it needed or not: some Italian people asked me about it, so it IS needed and would be used, if present.
In addition, I believe it should not be extremely complex to add, as a good part of the chord machinery is already read from external data files anyway.
Thanks again,
M.
Well, I don't see this changing in the future in Germany. In a big part of Europe (including where I am from) the German names are used and taught in music schools. Many people who read music haven't even heard of H being spelled as B in other parts of the world. In classical music Central Europe has a lot of influence, and that region says "cis Moll" for C# minor and "H Dur" for B major. Even in pop/jazz music, the chord names are almost exclusively German, such as Em / Am / H7 /Em; sharp and flats are written out as Cism or As.
I happen to be used to both notations since I also had music education in the US, but many here are confused when they see a B chord in a piece in E.
Ideally the implementation should only affect how the concept of a c sharp minor chord is displayed as (Cism, cis moll, do dièse mineur). The internal concept should be localization independent; so if one takes a mscz file, and changes to German chordnames, it should update the display from Bb to B and B to H (and C#m to Cism and so forth)