advanced altered chords

• Oct 9, 2018 - 16:51

I am trying to create a lead-sheet using roman numeral chord notation (on a Mac). in the command-k mode, simple diatonic chords such as I, IV, V are no problem; however I am not able to create chromatic alterations of these chords such as, bVi-dom7, bII-maj7, #III-dim7 etc....

What is the magic to make this happen? BTW I love Musescore!


Comments

Unfortunately, the chord symbol parsing system isn't designed to understand roman numerals, so the magic that converts "b" into a flat sign or # into a sharp sign when appropriate doesn't work. However, I can think of one possible workaround. Go to some other text element, edit it, press F2 to display the Special Characters palette, double click the first flat and sharp sign at top left to insert them, then copy and paste from here to your chord symbol. Note that other variations on this (like trying to use F2 directly in the chord symbol, or pasting in the other flat and sharp sign, or using the keyboard short Ctrl+Shift+b/#), won't work - I tried them :-).

Most likely it would also be possible to define a special version of the chord description file (see Style / General / Chord Symbols) that was optimized for this type of usage.

Meanwhile, though, it seems maybe you're better off not using the chord symbol facility at all, but adding these as staff text or lyrics. Then you could use the keyboard shortcuts for flat and sharp. That's actually what I generally do when creating Roman numeral analysis. It's not ideal either, but I've found it useful.

In reply to by Cris Eberle

Could be you'll find something that works better, but I'm curious what about the suggestion of using lyrics you think will be anything but fast? One non-obvious advantage - since these are not the chord symbols, no need for or worry about transposing.

As mentioned I use this approach all the time in my own educational materials, and I can't recall any program I've used (going back almost 30 years) ever being any easier. Not that it wouldn't be possible to improve...

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