Creating Simple Non Standard Chord Chart

• Mar 7, 2011 - 02:20

Hi,...

I'm looking to just create simple chord progression charts for guitar and bass. Sort of like a lead sheet but less emphasis on indicating melody and more so on indicating harmony and progression . I've figured out how to get the appropriate amount of bars according to meter and also getting the Bass and Treble clefs, but rather than doing "note entry" I'd rather just be able to type in the chord name in a text form (IE "Amin") above the treble clef for guitar and the bass root indicated above the bass clef (IE "A"). That way inversion, melody and quality can be improvised by the instrumentalist; and arrangement and form is more indicated (IE repeat this verse measure XX number of times then move to chorus/bridge measure).

I would just print the blank score out and hand write the chord progression in, but I don't have a printer and I'd like to share with bandmates via e-mail attachments or on facebook etc etc.

I'm on Version 1.0 and have not downloaded any plugins yet.

Hopefully this makes sense. I have been handwriting cheat charts and it's a little tedious, and I've only encountered this simple style in Jazz Combos. Doing this via software seems a lot easier but I have yet to find a program that will accommodate a simple style of progression writing. I have tried demo versions of Sibelius and Finale.

Is this possible in MuseScore?

Comments

• Mar 7, 2011 - 02:33

I'm not sure I understand what "non standard" aspect of a chord chart you are referring to. It sounds like you're talking about ordinary chord symbols, and those are easily entered - just see http://musescore.org/en/handbook/chord-name in the Handbook. Finale and Sibelius can both do this too, BTW, as can Band in a Box and pretty much all other notation programs I know. But MuseScore is definitely the one of the best I've seen, and especially so considering it's free!

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• Mar 7, 2011 - 03:01

Thanks,

Sorry for the misunderstanding; perhaps not as esoteric as I thought I was :)

I see where the Ctrl K comes in now and was able to make it work but it seems that I have to do the note entry before I can add the text in (Ctrl K) and I guess I'm trying to avoid having to enter the note. With that said this is turning out to be a good piece of freeware.

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• Mar 7, 2011 - 04:17

You would only need to enter something in the measure if you want more than one chord per measure, so I'm assuming that's what you mean. In that case, the best thing to do is to first fill the measure with rests, attach the chords to those, then select everything and hit Delete, which will erase the rests but leave the chords.

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