Chord name and flat symbol

• Mar 9, 2011 - 12:33

Using Musecore 1.0, Ubuntu 10.10 (and also Windows XP via Wine) and stdchords.xml.
When I enter a chord name, sometimes the flat symbol isn't correctly shown.

Example 1: select a note, press "Ctrl+K", enter "ab", press "Esc"
The "b" is turned into flat symbol.

Example 2: select a note, press "Ctrl+K", enter "e7b9", press "Esc"
The "b" is not turned into flat symbol. Same result using "Armony Properties".

Thanks
Antonio

Comments

• Mar 9, 2011 - 17:22

It is for me. Have you by any chance previously customized your chords.xml file? Tht's the file that controls how chords are recognized. What you are describing sounds like what would be expected to happen if MuseScore didn't recognize what you typed as a legitimate chord symbol. So for instance, while e7b9 is automaitcally recognized, emaj7b9 is not.

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• Mar 9, 2011 - 23:42

Actually, it was chords.xml, not stdchords.xml that I asked about. Confusing, I agree, but there is an important different. stdchords.xml controls *output* of chords; chords.xml controls *input*. What it sounded like to me at first is that MuseScore was not recognizing what you were typing, and that would normally happen because it doesn't match anything in chords.xml. And e7b9 should have matched.

But I was wrong. Looks like MuseScore recognized your chord just fine, but stdchords.xml just doesn't handle alterations in chord symbols correctly. Maybe because it is assumed that people using stdchords.xml instead of jazzchords.xml wouldn't be using altered chords? I don't know. But in any case, switching to jazzchords.xml fixes it (or, it does after after you get MuseScore to re-parse the chords, such as by re-loading the file).

You could also edit stdchords.xml to replace "7b9" with "7 b 9", and similarly for all other chords with the flat symbol. That's probably what should have been done in the first place. Unless I'm still misunderstanding something, which is quite possible.

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