Chord written directly above bass note in inversions.

• Feb 5, 2011 - 15:49

Hey everybody!

Something I would love to do is have the option to put the chord root directly below the chord in inversions. For example, instead of using the slash as in A/E (E A C# E), have a line under the A with the E below that. I think it's easier to read, saves a lot of space, and is very common in chord notation. Hopefully there's a way to do this that I just don't know about yet. Thank you very much for the good work, love the program!

Dan


Comments

I believe there is, if you edit the XML file you are using for your chord rendering (normally either stdchords.xml or jazzchords.xml in the MuseScore/styles folder). Search for renderBase and you'll see how the slash and bass note are rendered. By playing with the "m:x:y" elements, and finding an appropriate character to use for the slash, you can probably get what you want. Not sure if there's an easier way, but this should work.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for replying Marc! I can't find those files you're mentioning. Should they have been downloaded onto my computer when I downloaded the program? I can select them to change the font I want to use in the 'Edit General style' section of the Style dropdown, but don't quite know how to open them to be able to edit them. Thanks!

In reply to by dantheman39

Okay, after a little digging I found it, but I figured I'd explain it here in case anyone else comes along with as little experience as me in these matters: This is for a Mac, by the way. Go to Applications, right-click on the app Musescore, select Show package contents, then open the Contentes folder, then Resources folder, then Styles folder.
Now since I know absolutely nothing about this xml stuff, let's see if we can make this happen. Thanks again, hopefully I won't have write in again!

Dan

In reply to by dantheman39

So I gave up a year ago and came back to this later, after having messed around with other things in the font file, like adding personalized chords. Please keep in mind I know nothing about programming, so it took a lot of time to get this far :)

Thanks to Mark's suggestion, I was able to get the bass to render something like how I wanted it to look, or so I initially thought. If the chord above is very short (say E/B) it lines up nicely, but if I type in a more complicated chord, the bass note lines up toward the right of the chord. I've attached a snapshot so you can see what I'm talking about.

Here's the original code from the file before I changed it (this is in between where it says "renderBase"):
/ m:0:1 :n :a m:0:-1

Here's the way I had edited the code:

m:-7:1 _ m:7:-1 m:-12:14 :n :a m:12:-14

I was using the underscore instead of the slash, and positioning it with the m:x:y numbers.

Again, I don't have a real understanding of how computer code works, so if anybody knows a way to get the Bass Note to line up under the Root name, that would be amazing. Thanks again!

Attachment Size
Screen shot 2012-03-30 at 5.04.54 PM.png 16.02 KB

In reply to by dantheman39

Well, I can see why that wouldn't work. The offsets that are applied are relative to the last character renders, so the offset used before the slash (or underscore) will be relative to the last character of the main chord. Meaning it will always be the same distance from the *right* side of the chord, whereas you probably want it a fixed distance from the *left* side.

The solution would be to use the "push" and "pop" elements that are apparently supported, although I have no idea how the syntax actually works. The general concept of push and pop, though, is that you "push" the current coordinates before even rendering the root of the main chord, then "pop" then off before rendering the slash, and then you'd be able to apply your offset to the left side of the chord instead of the right. Trial and error may get you somewhere.

Do keep in mind, though, that scores you share with others as MSCZ files - including scores on musescore.com - won't retain your customizations. And writing chords vertically like that is counter to how virtually all major publishers do things. So you should give some thought to how important it really is to you give those facts.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks again, Mark. Yeah, I figured it would take a little more knowledge of syntax than the little I have. Maybe next year :)
I definitely have played a lot of scores that use the appearance I'm looking for, although most use a slash, they're still much further under (kind of on a diagonal to) the root. The reason it matters to me is that the way Musescore renders them right now takes up a lot of space when you get a complicated chord: so much so at times that my bandmates will think that the root is the following chord when reading sometimes, or I have to expand a measure a lot just to fit the chords next to each other. But I do realize this may be pretty low on the list of things for MuseScore to worry about. Again, I appreciate your help, and definitely appreciate MuseScore. Take care,

In reply to by dantheman39

It's a trade-off; the alternative is that chords take up more room vertically and hence you can't fit as many systems on a page. I suspect that's why the vertical style has fallen out of favor with most publisher over the past 30-40 years or so.

When I have chord symbols that collide horizontally, there are a number of approaches I take. One is just to not use too many measures per line overall. Increasing stretch on problematic measures helps too, and so does nudging chords away from each other. In situations where I have a progression like "C C/Bb C/A C/G", I sometimes write it as "C /Bb /A /G" - that is, I don't keep repeating the C.

You could of course also just globally shrink the font used for chords, and I have done that on occasion, too.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I too would also like to see functionality such as this, since 'displaying chords as fractions' seems to be a common presentation option for composers using creative or alternative chord symbols. Finale has this function but its spacing is very limited, and Sibelius also has some simple functionality related to this matter.

Perhaps a developer would be willing to spend the few minutes to script the RenderBase line of code to accommodate this request? I would like to suggest that a user typing an underscore "_" into the chord symbol would be a good trigger for adding a bass note directly underneath.

One more step to switching all my notation needs over to MuseScore ;)

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