A few chord requests

• Jul 29, 2010 - 08:58

1) It would sure be nice if the Harmony Properties bass notes could have accidentals that could be flat or sharp. For example, in the following line cliche
| Dm Dm/C# | Dm/C E7/B |
musescore only lets me do it as
| Dm Dm/Db | Dm/C E7/B |
It looks pretty terrible that way. Even worse, if I want to write a simple inversion like
E7/G#
I have to write it as
E7/Ab
which really makes no sense at all.

2) A minor chord option that lets us use the common "-" for minor instead of lowercase "m" ? Or at least "min" ?
Minor ("m") looks a lot like major ("M") when using a common jazz font. Being able to use dashes for minor would sure be nice. I'd settle for "min" though; I don't think "min" looks as professional as a dash, but at least it wouldn't be confused with a major chord.

Comments

• Jul 29, 2010 - 15:20

1) Indeed, the harmony properties are lacking on this matter. There however a solution: you can type in Dm/C# (Ctrl+K) rather than using the harmonies properties window.

2) - as minor: to get this solution you can hack into the chords.xml & stdchords.xml file which can you find in your MuseScore install folder (Windows: C:\Program Files\MuseScore\styles). It's just a matter of adding new chord names in both.
I added for each minor chord an equivalent for the - symbol and attached the resulting files to this comment. You can download them and drop them in your folder but backup your current files first before overwriting them.

Attachment Size
chords.xml 29.41 KB
stdchords.xml 12.47 KB

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• Oct 9, 2010 - 05:33

Re: #2 (customizing the way the chord names are parsed and rendered) - thanks for showing how to accomplish this!

In Finale, I had long ago deleted the entire pre-defined set of chords and set up my own, so I could enforce my own "controlled vocabulary" of just a couple dozen chords or so based on Brandt & Roemer. I would like to do the same in MuseScore. Is there any reason I need to keep all those chord symbols around that I have no intention of using? Also, are the particular chord id's used for each chord in music.xml "magic", or can I simply number my own subset 1-30? I'd like to think the latter, but I can imagine that working with the harmony dialog might require "magic" id's. Plus the gaps in the sequencing make me suspect there is some sort of master plan. Also, I guess keeping the same chord id's would make it possible to swap out one of the standard chord rendering files. But for my own sanity, I'd still like to list them in the order I see fit, even if I keep the original id's.

The Brandt & Roemer system, BTW, I've never seen in its original published form, but it *is* a popular standard in publishing circles. Here's a link to one particular adaptation of it, for anyone curious:

http://www.litchfieldjazzfest.com/uploads/docs/jazzcamp/Chord%20Symbol%…

The main feature is "mi" and "ma" for the best compromise between consistency, conciseness, and readability. I personally reserve use of parens for things *other* than basic tertian alterations, with mi(ma7) being the only such symbol I use regularly.

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• Oct 9, 2010 - 18:25

The jazzchords.xml may provide similar fonts and placements as the particular Brandt & Roemer adaptation I linked to, but it still uses "Maj" and "m" instead of "ma" and "mi", so no, I wouldn't call it close in the way that counts to me. So the first customization I did was to create a customized copy of jazzchords.xml in which I changed all occurrences of Maj to ma and m to mi. But then, when entering chordnames in a score, one still needs to *type* Maj and m in order for the parser to recognize these chords - and then it outputs the ma and mi symbols. While sort of viable, it's obviously awkward. Luckily, that's where chord.xml comes in; it let me change the string I type to get these chord symbols. So everything does work, but with a bit of customization.

[ EDIT: I have no idea what I was smoking when I was trying this out last night. Despite being referred to as Maj and m in the jazzchords.xml file, they do in fact display as ma and mi. So I guess my mods to that file turn out to have been unnecessary, and I can see now that all I was doing is changing the internal handle used to refer to these symbols, not changing the rendering at all. But the mods to chords.xml are still relevant to get the parser to understand "ma" and "mi". BTW, I can't find any evidence of this MuseJazz font being installed anywhere in usual Windows fashion. Is there a way I can look at its symbols? ]

As for the issue of changing chord id's breaking the ability to share scores with others, although I am not sure I'd really be doing much of that (except distribution by PDF, of course), that's really all the convincing I need not to mess with this. I'll keep the same chord id's. Also occurs to me that there could be future version compatibility issues as well if I go my own way here. For now, my plan is to keep all id's the same but comment out the chords I don't actually use. That way I still get visual feedback that the parser failed to recognize the chord if I've entered something not in my own canon. Although I suppose I should really just go ahead and do the whole thing then upload it for others to use.

But I can't help wondering about the 'holes" in the chord numbering sequencing, and if there is some sort of rhyme or reason to choice of chord id's for specific chords that would be good for me to know.

Also, it seems that a user interface to allow one to edit chord definitions more easily than messing with the XML files would be useful for most people. Is this something that could be done via a plug-in? I haven't yet looked into API there, so I don't know what's possible. Once upon a time I was a programmer, and while I can't see myself getting directly involved in source code on this project, I could see myself together together the occasional plug-in.

[ EDIT: After downloading the nightly build, I see that a chord editor is already in place. Wow. But it appears to still use the chord.xml names with the Maj & m. Editing that file by hand to replace Maj and m with ma and mi appears to work just fine with this dialog so it looks more like I expect. But really, I think the chord editor should allow me to do that without messing with the XML. Also, while it's wonderful to be able to hand-tune the position of each and every symbol in each and every chord, really, what would be even more useful is a set of global controls for the font, size, and default position of the different parts of the chord symbol name. I think of a chord symbol as "Root Quality Extension Alteration / Bass". For example, in Cmi9b5/Gb, Root = C, Quality = mi, Extension = 9, Alteration = b5, Bass = Gb. Give me global controls for the font, size, and position of each of those five elements and I'll bet I never mess with the customizations for the individual chords. Except there also needs a way to specifiy where parens are used. ]

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• Oct 11, 2010 - 10:12

Thanks for explaining how to make new chords.
That made me succed in creating three chords I was missing. (although it took some time to find the relevant codes)

A triangle for maj7
An O-slash for half-diminished
A "degree"-sign for diminished.

I would like the "degree"-sign to be a little bigger, but cannot find something suitable anywhere, anybody knows??

I enclose an example, and also my xml-files, if you want to use the codes.

regards
ph

Attachment Size
chords.xml 21.2 KB
stdchords.xml 11.59 KB
new chords.mscz 1.67 KB

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