Chord Notes from the Chord Symbols

• Mar 21, 2024 - 17:01

Is it possible to generate the notes of a chord from the symbols?

I can do this by exporting the midi of chords with symbols on an empty stave and then reimporting the generated midi to give me the notes and that works great. I just wondered if I could do this without that process.

Thank you.

Comments

• Mar 21, 2024 - 20:16

Thank you very much. What a time saving tool. Only one little thing that causing me a problem now. I have the chord symbols on a piano stave and when I realise the symbols the root note of tyhe chord is tied to the treble stave using umpteen leger lines. I hoped these would conventiently land on the bas clef. I can cut and paste these on to the bass cstave, but only one at a time. If I try to cut and paste more than one note the destination notes arte no longer visible.

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 08:39

> Just depends on your usage.
That's not an argument!
I myself have never used chords, the capo functions, pizzicato or tablature lines. But the software would be practically useless if it didn't support these and many other things.

Sorry, I didn't want to start a discussion about the (still) missing things in MuS4 :-). A lot of it is on the plan, just not implemented yet. We are 'still' at version 4.2.1, so: make requests and wait ...

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 02:39

...another step backwards?

Yes... another one.
'Split Stave' was previously available in MuseScore 3. Now it's gone, regardless of who uses it, and for what purpose, as 'Split Stave' was not meant strictly for chord symbols (that others may not use).

Generally speaking...
To go from more "features" to fewer, is the reality here, and I believe that's the main point being made by "another step backwards".
Following some bizarre logic, were I deaf, I could say that removing score playback would not be a step backwards (e.g., depends on one's usage).
But I know the difference... ;-)

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 04:14

Indeed, there are those that do not use score playback. For them, removing it would not be a step backwards.

Many people spend so much time complaining about what is "missing" from MU4, that they don't try it long enough to try and figure it out. And notice what is added. And that is fine. No one is being forced to use MU4. If MU4 is "missing" so much stuff, don't use it. Nothing wrong with that. We all know what the problems are.

Generally speaking, it's all about usage. !00%. I work in MU4 every day. That big long list of things "missing"? I either never used them or don't miss them. That's my usage. I don't have MU3 on this computer. That's my usage. But everyone get's to use what they need. Whichever version that is.

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 06:27

To those pianists who got themselves addicted to ms4 and starting to slack on touching a real piano keyboard, this new feature to cursor-snip noteheads with the right index finger and press Ctrl+C,V with the left hand is a step forward. :p

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 14:02

You wrote:
Many people spend so much time complaining about what is "missing" from MU4, that they don't try it long enough to try and figure it out. And notice what is added.

Figure what out? Try long enough to figure out that a formerly available feature is truly missing?
(And that noticing "what is added" somehow makes up for what is missing?)
By "missing" I mean "gone". Perhaps you mean that someone doesn't try long enough to "figure out", for example, that in MuseScore 4, the Inspector has been melded into the Properties panel, so it is not truly missing. Same thing for the (now hidden) position and tempo sliders in the playback controls.
(The Save button also comes to mind as not truly missing. There were big discussions in the forum about that one. ;-)

You wrote:
Generally speaking, it's all about usage. !00%. I work in MU4 every day. That big long list of things "missing"? I either never used them or don't miss them. That's my usage.

Yes, but that is your usage, specific to you. It is speaking for oneself.
Because...
If 5 million people use a program that promotes, let's say, 500 features and a new version comes out with, say, 40 features missing - or not (yet) implemented - there will be a fringe group completely unaffected (and who won't care) because they never use (or never knew about) the missing features.
But, generally speaking, others will be affected and consider the new version "a step backwards".

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 19:47

@Jojo... you wrote:
The save button is truely missing, it is gone!

LOL!! I inadvertently resurrected the sticky wicket save button topic.
My takeaway from that rollicking and lengthy discussion was that there is a 90's save button, but it's buried in the File menu. BTW: It even kept the floppy icon:
Save_Buttons.png
Most importantly, though, is that the functionality of 'saving' is still extant, unlike truly missing features. (Remember the piano roll editor?)

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 21:15

There's a Save menu entry (File > Save) and a Save shortcut (Ctrl+S), but no Save button (in the toolbar, available at a single(!) click), And only the latter has (very arrogantly IMHO) been called "a thing of the 90's".
Yes, a diskette icon might be calles a 90's thing (but if so, it is in a menu too), a button to save certainly is not.

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• Mar 23, 2024 - 09:40

Yes, a diskette icon might be calles a 90's thing (but if so, it is in a menu too), a button to save certainly is not.

The diskette icon is not in the menu in MS 3. For MS 4 it was moved into the menu (other icons, too):
Save.png
I also was in favor of keeping the (one-click) toolbar icon and, in that lengthy discussion, I even (jokingly) presented a hard disk icon - to modernize the arrogantly called "90's thing":
Updated icon.png
(You actually suggested using SSD... :-)

Anyhow, here's my understanding...
In MuseScore 4, the save button (formerly represented in MS 3 by the toolbar diskette icon) was moved into the File menu - so not truly missing. The icon is there, but you have to dig for it - so folk rightfully complain it is no longer a one-click save. Also, since the menu entry 'Save' was already present, moving the icon there is actually redundant.
However, 'save' functionality did not vanish when the button icon was moved into the File menu. It is the one-click ability which vanished.

In MuseScore 4, 'Split Staff' is truly missing from what was formerly available. Another example is the piano roll editor.

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 15:23

I never said I was speaking for anyone else. I understand that we get used to how a particular program works. And then a new version comes out, and it doesn't work the same way. It is frustrating.
I am a long time Sibelius user. Many aspects of the UI and various features are vastly superior to anything MuseScore will ever be. So I am "affected". In that regard MuseScore is indeed "a step backwards". But they are two different programs. Doing similar things. And yet there are things I like better about MU4. So I adapt. Or go back. That's what using software is all about. I rarely open Sibelius anymore. I could spend all my time complaining about this or that. Or I could just get on with doing what I need to get done, in whatever software I am using.

I believe the current term is "regression".

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 10:02

It seems I have started a lot of discontent with MUS 4.

What is worse about MUS3 -> MUS4 in this particular case is the fact that the chord symbols were rendered entirely on the treble staave with all those unsightly leger lines when a perfectly good bass clef was just waiting underneath.
To try a workaround I installed MUS3 (that was a shock to get used to again, but I loved that way MUS 3 kept all the new staff within a set of tabs).
I thought I mighty copy the notes from the MUS4 stave to the MUS3 stave and then split the stave and eventually copy the notes back. But the paste was ignored in MUS3
So ... I exported the stave as midi in MUS4 and then opened the midi file in MUS3 and, what do you know, the treble and bass staves were populated correctly, no need to split the stave.
So ... I tried this trick in MUS4 and opened the exported midi as a new project and, what do you know, the notes were correctly laid out again! Sorry for sounding surprised at what the software is supposed to do in the first place.
Finally, then, I was able to copy the notes back on to the original and all was OK.

Therefore I'm having to workaround in a similar way to how I realised the symbols initially. But it works and I'm happy with this.

It seems that MUS4 is incorrectly realizing the symbols in way that was correct in MUS3.

Thanks for your help or would not have gone down this route anyway.

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 10:34

"So ... I tried this trick in MUS4 and opened the exported midi as a new project and, what do you know, the notes were correctly laid out again! Sorry for sounding surprised at what the software is supposed to do in the first place."

Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that. And as far as I know, the MIDI import feature has undergone no improvements whatsoever in the V4 vs. V3 (quite the contrary, since the Import panel has disappeared, and with it a host of options to facilitate file editing).
The bottom line is that MIDI format files can come in different states, for no clearly definable reason, with one or two staves, or more. You've been lucky on this one. Not sure at all it'll happen every time.

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• Mar 22, 2024 - 11:25

Oh, I agree, but once its in midi I move it to Ableton. I could have managed without this workaround but I wanted as much work to be done on the midi as possible by MUS4 so that if I had to go back to the score then I would not have too much to do to get a reasonably rendedred midi.
The midi is really quite fiddly in this issues in other ways as well. For example, once I've realised the chord symbols I want to remove all the root notes from the bass clef. This looks and sounds like I want it to in MUS4, that is, no root, but when I export the midi I find that the root notes have still been rendered! Never mind, its free software and I've got some sort of workaround.

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