Chord symbol style defaults

• Dec 2, 2018 - 17:03

For 3.0 there have been some changes to the chord symbol text style settings, and I wanted to get your feedback on them:

1) the default alignment is now centered rathered rather than left-justified
2) there are now two text styles available - "Chord Symbol A" (the default) and "Chord Symbol B" (which you can select in the Inspector to format alternate chord symbols)
3) the default style for "Chord Symbol B" is larger than but same vertical position as "Chord Symbol A"

For me, 1) is questionable. I think it's the right behavior if fretboard diagrams are present but not otherwise. I wonder if maybe the thing to do is just automatically override the alignment in that case, much as we do with lyrics for hyphenated or melisma syllables (default is centered but we force left in those cases). Or we could change the defaults just for certain templates, ones involving guitar?

2) is quite welcome but I wonder if we'd be better off with different names. A & B are non-descriptive, and worse, they sound like actual chords (why note also styles for C-G, or Bb or F#)?

3) I think should be tweaked, I'd personally go for a default of same size but italic (in jazz templates I'd probably make them smaller, since defaults are larger), and placing them higher than "Chord Symbol A". Sure, if they occur on the same note, autoplace automatically moves one above (not sure how to determine which), but alternate chords are also included in places where there is no "standard" chord, and I think they should still align with other alternate chords.

What do others think?


Comments

Addition to above: It is in MuseScore 3.02 no longer possible to set defaults for chords to be under the system, as it was possible in version 2.2.

In reply to by oleviolin_

Actually, it's quite simple to make your chords default to below - simply flip one below (using the Placement property in the Inspector) and then hit the "Save as style" button next to the control.

BTW, a bug currently prevents this from immediately affecting existing chord, but doing a select all similar for the chords then hitting the "Reset" button on the same control fixes it. Or just save & reload. There is a pending fix for the bug.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for the input
I have found another workaround. There is a setting for it in the version 3.02 .mss file on line 184
If you change the value from 0 to 1,
1

anyway:
My default inspector was too narrow, to show me the save as style button to the right.
I found it now. (By resizing the inspector)
Thank you very much.

In reply to by xavierjazz

For the record, all of the things I brought up were already fixed before the initial 3.0 release. Chord symbols are indeed left-justified by default, the styles are now called "Chord Symbol" and "Chord Symbol (Alternate)", and the alternate style is being higher and italic (same size by default but smaller for the jazz templates).

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