Major 7 - different chord symbols in one sheet?

• Mar 15, 2014 - 03:09

Hi,

I am working on a beginners' teaching aide and I have to explain and show different spellings of chord symbols. For instance, how can I get a triangle for major 7 and a stroked through a degree symbol.

Not only I need them, but I need several writing options at once in order to show that C Major 7 can be written as CMaj7 and as C Triangle 7 etc.

I have searched and read a couple of things here but only found that I can edit general style and when I do so it changes all chords that exist. And I have yet to find a sheet that contains a triangle or half diminished sign.

I'd appreciate input on this. Thanks.

--D.

Comments

• Mar 15, 2014 - 05:18

The triangle and half-diminished symbols are found in cchords_sym.xml,. as mentioned in the Handbook under Chord name . Unfortunately, you are right that this selection is all or nothing. For 2.0 it will be possible to mix and match. While it's not stable enough for "real" use - meaning I can't recommend it in general - you might try downloading a nightly build just for this one example.

Or, you might consider just using plain text.

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• Mar 16, 2014 - 00:06

thank you for a fast answer! haha, now I know at least where the triangles etc. are!

Yeah, well, I wish you godspeed with 2.0 then. I think I will try to use the suggestions below as I also must be done with it tonight.

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 17:53

I've been struggling with this, too.

I've found the styles folder in the app bundle, but can't navigate to it from within MuseScore, so copied it out and put it in a dedicated folder under Music where I keep my MuseScore stuff.

The problem is, when I create a new lead sheet and select cchords_sym.xml as the style to use, I still can't use "C triangle 7" instead of "Cma7", etc.

I must be missing something, but so far haven't figured out what.

Also, I downloaded and installed Jojo's chord plugin, but am unsure whether that is supposed to enable the use of symbols like "C triangle 7" or not.

Any advice welcome.

Thanks,

Will

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 18:03

you mean my chord chart plugin? It is just supposed to show the different chords, depending on which chord*.xml is loaded, it doesn't do anything to other scores.
Its only purpose is to show 2 more chords than the one that comes with MuseScore

With cchords_sym.xml you'd still enter "Cma7" to get "C triangle 7"

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 18:37

Thanks, Jojo.

Either way, when I enter "Cma7", that's all I get. It doesn't change to "C triangle 7" regardless of what I do.

Can anyone advise how to get this working? Should I be able to navigate to the style directory even though it's located within the app bundle itself?

Thanks,

Will

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 19:06

I think you should be able to navigate to it, but I'm not at all familiar with the Apple world.
Uains cchord_sym.xml, entering "Cma7" gives me a "Ctriangle", no 7, a "Cma9" gives "Ctriangle9".
Use the chord chart plugin, select the xml and then double click on the chords to see how they got entered

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 20:07

If typing Cma7 does not result in a trianle, then you don't have cchords_sym selected correctly. Whatever went wrong that prevented you from navigating to the styles folder is probably the issue. What version of musescore, and what OS? How are you trying to selectthis file? Whatbgoes wrong when you try to navigate?

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 20:34

Hi Marc,

Here is what I have:

OS: Mavericks 10.9.2
MuseScore: 1.3

I open MS, click on Style -> Load Style then navigate to Applications -> MuseScore, but am unable to drill down into the app bundle. No further contents are displayed.

I then copied the "styles" directory out of the app bundle to my Music directory, went through the above steps again, selected cchords_sym.xml and clicked Ok, but when adding chord names to my lead sheets, these just stay as "Cma7". They aren't converted over to "C triangle 7".

I don't get any error messages at any point during the above.

I'll try rebooting the system to see if that helps.

Thanks,

Will

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 20:39

That's the wrong menu item.. You don't want Style / Load Style; you want Style / General / Chordname, and then the browse button. It should start off already in the right folder. But it actually shouldn't matter; I believe you just type "cchords_sym.xml" into the box without even using the browse button.

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 21:35

Thanks, Marc.

I've tried that, but still can't navigate to the style folder within the app bundle. If there is a way to do this, please let me know. As far as I'm aware, this can't be done from within an app unless MuseScore has included some extra functionality that allows this.

I have been able to get this working, however, by copying the style folder out of the app bundle to a dedicated MuseScore directory, so that's good.

Thanks for your help (and everyone else, too) and if anyone knows how I can navigate into the app bundle to use the resources located there, please let me know so I don't have to duplicate folders, etc.

Will

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 22:11

I've never used a Mac, so I'm not really familiar with the issues it creates. I have a vague awareness that there is something called a "package" and that you might need to right click (ctrl-click, sorry) this and say "show package contents" - see http://musescore.org/node/10129, which documents the plugin installation procedure.

I'm surprised this dialog doesn't just start right off in that folder already like it does for Windows and Linux, but maybe MacOS forbids this for some reason. But it should still work to simply type the name without ever opening the dialog, I'd have thought. It does on other OS's.

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• Apr 22, 2014 - 22:29

Yes, that's right: Navigating into an app bundle using command + click and choosing "Show contents" is the standard way to access the internals of an app if you are doing this from Finder (like Windows Explorer), but it can't be done as far as I know as an option from an application drop down menu, etc.

When I choose Style -> Edit General Style from within MuseScore and then click on chordnames, it starts me off in my Documents folder (pretty standard for a Mac), but if I try to navigate to the MuseScore app bundle, it just shows me the app - there's no way to drill down past this.

This is standard behaviour as far as I know for a Mac. Otherwise, people who shouldn't be fooling around with an app's internals would be too likely to mess something up.

I'll just copy all the extra resource folders out of the bundle and keep them in my MuseScore directory I created under Music.

Thanks again,

Will

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• Feb 13, 2015 - 20:00

OK, just downloaded 2.0.
First, in the style>chord I choose Jazz;

co (letter) will yield c circle (dim); (that was also in cchord_sym);
c0 (number) will yield half diminished (circle with a line); this is a new one, and you don't have to do c-7b5. much easier;
and for the triangle: ct.

That's it. Glad musescore is so logical, so you can find those things yourself...t=triangle...didn't try much more combinations...

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