Keeping alternate cords names aligned
I want to enter the following cord name: A/C# (meaning nominally A but C# also works) and have it displayed with the letters all on the same baseline. But when I enter that text as the name of the cord attached to the first note of the measure the letters descend a bit (the slash is a bit lower than the A and the C# is even lower) -- not while typing, but after I accept the text. (See attached screen shot.) Is there a way to get the letters to be on the same baseline? Perhaps a preference or a special character that means "slash without making the right-hand letter lower"? (I did search for the answer but had no luck.)
I am using MuseScore 3.2.3.22971 (and am impressed at how far it has come since version 2) on macOS 10.14.6
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Comments
No, that notation means A major with C# as the root node and gets interpreted as such my MuseScore.
You could write "A (C#)" maybe?
In reply to No, that notation meas A… by Jojo-Schmitz
Thanks. Unfortunately the slash is the standard notation for English Country dance music and contradance music and it's all displayed with the text on a single baseline (at least in every tune book I've seen, including the Barnes books, Portland Collections, Waltz books...). It's frustrating to have the program be too clever when I just want simple formatting.
In reply to Thanks. Unfortunately the… by r3owen
Just define two chords on the same note.
Alternate chords are usually written in parentheses over the normal chord.
(C Maj7)
Am7
If it is written with Slash, it is alternating bass.
CMaj7/AIf it is written as a line between them, it becomes Polychord.
CMaj7————
Dm
In reply to Alternating chords are… by Ziya Mete Demircan
The shortcut "Add chord symbol" (Ctrl+K) was used in the above aniGIF.
Just to add, if you really want this notation and understand that many, many musicians around the world will not interpret it as you intend, you can provide a custom chord formatting xml in which the vertical positioning isn't changed by a slash.
See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/chord-symbols#chord-symbol-style and the inline comments in such a chords.xml file for more information.
In reply to Just to add, if you really… by jeetee
Thank you very much. I will have a go at the xml.
I'm just trying to make the music look like all the published examples.
In reply to Thank you very much. I will… by r3owen
For the record: on a Mac one has to get to the original files by looking in the application bundle, e.g. from in
Terminal:I then found if I commented out two lines the chords symbols look right (I have no idea what the two lines do, it was brute-force trial and error):
In reply to Thank you very much. I will… by r3owen
Hello! I'm having the same issues with wanting my bass note to be aligned with the chord. Have been searching for how i could change it and it seems like you may found a way around it. If you don't mind, could I have the xml file? Thank you (:
Are you sure that's what those pubishers mean by it? I've nevr heard of such a thing, and indeed, the situations where an A chord is called for but a C# also works would be so rare as to probably never have happened. But an A chord with a C# in the bass - which is what that notation normally means - is incredibly common. I would be willing to bet that this is what the music you are looking at means.
In which case, simply use the built in facility for that by typing "A/C#". Any attempt to do it another way will likely not work correctly - either the layout, or the parts, or transposition, or the MusicXML export, or the playback, or something else, will be wrong.
I wouldn't worry that Musecore displays this like many other publishers and offsets the bass note slightly. It means the same thing either way. After all, plenty of the poeple reading your music may be more familair with the publishers who do it the same way we do and might be just as put off by your attempt to "fix" it. but anyhow, glad you figured out how!
In reply to Are you sure that's what… by Marc Sabatella
I am not sure what is meant by it (being a melody player). It may well specify the root of the chord. What I am sure of is that I want to duplicate the format used in our standard works, such as Barnes, Portland Collection, etc. I have never seen the descending text before and it's not normal for english country dance or contradance music.
I could live with the descending text but it looks ugly to me and the XML hackery worked, so I'll go with that.
In reply to I am not sure what is meant… by r3owen
<< I am not sure what is meant by it (being a melody player). It may well specify the root of the chord. >>
Ok that clarifies the "mysterious" notation, indeed that's the well known and common usage chord + this bass then.
Now, for the look, you have made me wondering and I have checked the publications I have.
Indeed the " / " and the letter indicating the bass are not lower than the main chord, but aligned.
So it seems to be a common usage to have them aligned.
In reply to << I am not sure what is… by frfancha
In my experience, it's about 50/50 as to which is more common overall, but probably it correlates a bit with publishers who use a handwritten font (or who literally hand-write) are probably more likely to use the offset than those who use serif fonts. And that probably splits pretty well along the lines of jazz/blues/funk versus other styles.
Since we already do something with this distinction in having jazz & standard chord symbol styles, if someone wants to do a more thorough survey and confirm that publishers using serif fonts are more likely to keep them aligned, I wouldn't be opposed to seeing the offset go away in the standard style. This would make a good very simple PR for someone who wanted to try their hand at contributing to MuseScore development.
In reply to In my experience, it's about… by Marc Sabatella
Changing the XML is easy, but getting agreement to do so sounds a bit difficult. Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to add a checkbox to the Chord Symbols style dialog box (both coding and getting permission to merge the pull request)?
In reply to Changing the XML is easy,… by r3owen
If I thought adding a checkbox for that were really easy, I'd have done it when I added new checkboxes to control superscripting for MsueScore 3.3 (see the current beta, if you haven't already). It's not necessarily hard, it's just more work because the specific offset is hardcoded in the XML, we'd want to replace that with some sort of parameterization more than I wanted to deal with - I was mostly concerned with doing what I needed to get Nashville notation working. But if someone wanted to take it on, I see no reason it wouldn't eventually get merged.
As for getting agreement to just remove the offset, I don't know that this would be hard, I don't know that anyone has ever really argued strongly in favor of it.
BTW, looking more closely at your changes to the XML you found the right lines, but deleting them is not a good diea. Might have worked for this case but most likely broke something else (like the spacing betwene the accidental and the note name). What you really need to do is get rid of just the "m:-0.2/1" etc. in the second line, that's what does the offset. It says, "move the cursor 0.2 point horizontally, 1 point vertically", and do it similarly before and after drawing the slash. To really see what they do, try changing those to larger values.