?? Exactly How "Realize Chord Symbols" Works ??

• Apr 7, 2021 - 17:25

I'm trying to create a score with 3-staffs (vocal plus piano). The source is 1915 paper sheet music. so I COULD just copy all the notes one by one into MuseScore. But that seems hugely labor-intensive, since I have very little experience entering multiple notes in a single staff and I'm VERY slow at it. For this song, I already have a MuseScore lead sheet with one staff (vocal plus chords). So, after creating a new file with 3-staffs, I copied the lead sheet contents into the vocal line of the score. I noticed that when you right-click on a chord symbol, there's an option "Realize Chord Symbols", which seemed like a promising way to short-cut the data entry.

However, when I tried it, the detailed notes showed up in the vocal staff. Would there be any way to direct the chord realization to one of the piano staffs? Alternatively, is there a way to copy all the chord symbols from the vocal staff to one of the piano staffs, realize THOSE chords and then delete the chord symbols from that staff? And is there any way to realize chord symbols for more than one measure at a time? (Yes, I can hear my mother's ghost in my ear warning "that's the lazy way. In the long run, it would be faster to just suck it up and enter the piano notes one by one. And when you're done, you'll have learned a new skill." [g])

But MuseScore has so many wonderful features that I don't know about, that I thought it couldn't hurt to ask the experts if there might be a better way to accomplish my objective.

Thanks for any advice anyone can offer. (Even if all you say is "your mother was right", that would help too. [g])

Comments

• Apr 7, 2021 - 17:52

"That's a lazy way. In the long run, it would be quicker to enter piano notes one by one. And when you're done, you'll be armed with a new skill." :D

In order to apply Realize Chord Symbols on the Piano staff, the chord-symbols must also be on the same staff. I think they are at the vocal part in your copy. You can select them all, copy them and then paste them into the piano staff.

But I don't think that applying this method will give you a satisfactory result.

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• Apr 7, 2021 - 18:09

Thanks for responding, so I won't spend any more time trying to do the impossible. But is there actually a way to select all the chords for a particular staff in order to be able to copy or delete them in one swell foop? How would I go about doing that?
I often encounter situations where that would be very convenient to be able to select a sequence of chords (or a sequence of lyrics) and then cut, or copy or paste them, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do and thought it wasn't possible.

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• Apr 7, 2021 - 19:01

What a great tip! I guess I could/should have experimented with the Select options to figure it out on my own, but your explanation was very clear. This will be VERY useful. And it also helped me figure out how to select one particular verse of lyrics (after right-click on "Select", click on "More"). There are so many powerful features lurking in MuseScore that are only a click away IFF you know exactly where to click.
You've helped me learn a lot, and you've inspired me to do some more fiddling around to see if more fine-grained selections of lyrics are possible. THANKS A BUNCH!!!

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• Apr 7, 2021 - 19:18

The thing is, "realize chord symbols" can't magically read your sheet music. It would simply come up with its own version of those chords and would lose almost all the character of the original. plus they aren't designed to be readable or playable directly. It's more just for customizing the playback within MuseScore.

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• Apr 7, 2021 - 21:34

Yes, I was aware that MuseScore doesn't have magical powers -- although it would not surprise me to learn that you all are planning to introduce some in the next major release [g]. I didn't necessarily need a note-for-note version of the original 1915 sheet music. What I wanted was something legible (the copy I downloaded from a university collection has a grey background that makes it hard to read) and playable by a pianist who doesn't usually play from chords. I was hoping that chord realization might give me a head start to enter a simplified arrangement.

As it happens, I just found out that my original problem has been solved by other means. Did a search, and it turns out that the song I was looking for is now available from an on-line music seller for only $5 (note-for-note it matches the original sheet music, plus it adds chord symbols). There seems to be a lot more vintage music available; I wonder if there's been a quality breakthrough in OCR scanning software for music.)

I'm still grateful for the help here that helped me learn about more MuseScore features that I didn't know about and that will be valuable for the future.

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• Apr 7, 2021 - 22:36

It might indeed give you that head start. It won't be readable as it, but if you're familiar with how to read chord symbols, it will show you the notes, then you can rewrite them in a way that makes more sense. Should this turn out to be necessary in the future for some other score, now that this one is covered.

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• Apr 26, 2023 - 07:29

I created a score in order to add the chords of a song to my Pro Tools session. However I was surprised to find that the chords were excluded from the MIDI. Shouldn't the MIDI correspond to what one hears (apart from, of course, specifying the instrument )?

So then I wondered if there could be a 'realise chord symbol' operation, and there is—good! However, I still think there is scope for the option of outputting the chord along with the score, perhaps also optionally on a separate track. Note that the 'realise' operation does mess up the score, so an UNDO is required at some stage. Also, for a long score with a lot of chords, it would be easy to miss one or more in the realise stage, which could get messy in terms of both export and restoring the score.

Score (1) – original.
Score (2) – after realisation.

Attachment Size
Blue Bayou.mscz 22.39 KB
Blue Bayou.mscz 25.79 KB

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• Apr 26, 2023 - 13:35

Chord symbols are exported to MIDI normally, unless maybe you have muted that channel or disabled playback of chord entirely. I just tested on your file (before realization) and it worked as expected - the MIDI contained the notes for the chords, not just the melody. That's using the current version - 4.0.2.

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• Apr 28, 2023 - 02:40

I found, this morning, eventually, that Musescore treats the piano stave and the chords as two separate instruments, and generates two MIDI tracks in Pro Tools. I was only looking at the lower track.

Incidentally, in order to understand the 'PRN' option in the MIDI dialogue, I had to search around quite a bit, even in MS (no luck), to find a definition (to check if not setting it was part of my problem). There is scope for the dialogue to be more helpful here, as I suspect many people won't know either.

See also FEATURE REQUEST: "Dialogue for Export MIDI: Please explain 'PRN'"

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