How do I write a Neapolitan Major chord?

• Jun 6, 2015 - 21:23

I'd like to write in a Neapolitan Major chord (...long story) but I'm unsure how to do this. There are two things that I'd like to try, and I can't figure out either of them.

Number one is writing "E neap. major" with the "neap." and the "major" stacked;

Number two is writing "E-^b9", which would work except the b renders as a b and not a flat. See image:

Neapolitan Major error.png

(Note: E Neapolitan major is E-F-G-A-B-C#-D#-E.)

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• Jun 7, 2015 - 00:10

Hmm, you seem to be mixing two different languages here. Either that or I am completely misunderstanding what you mean.

The classical symbol for the Neapolitan chord - "N" or "N6" - would be used in a Roman numeral analysis setting, not a chord symbol setting. If you are writing chord symbols, you wouldn't normally use any special notation at all to indicate that a chord happened to be a Neapolitan. You'd just spell the chord normally. So if you are saying you are in the key of E minor, the Neapolitan is just "F", plain and simple. Or F/A, if you are putting it in first inversion as is common. Or, if you are actually in D# minor, then the Neapolitan is just E or E/G#.

But I have no idea what "E-F-G-A-B-C#-D#-E" is supposed to represent. That doesn't resemble anything I know of as a Neapolitan even slightly. A Neapolitan chord as I learned (and have taught!) it is just a major triad built on scale degree bII. It looks like you are actually talking about a *scale*, not a chord, but we don't normally use chord symbols for scales.

Anyhow, putting aside the question of what a Neapolitan is, let's just deal with the chord symbol itself.

There is no way to create stacked chord symbol notation except by hand-editing the chord description files, and I highly recommend against that. So maybe instead enter the root as a regular chord symbol so it transposes, then add the stacked text as a separate staff text.

The syntax with the triangle probably *should* have worked, but doesn't. You can fool the parser by inserting a hard space - Ctrl+space - between the ^ and b. It also works to type E-^7b7 or E-b9^ if that helps.

The rule being followed is that the triangle is a synonym for "ma" (or "maj" or "M" etc) and can be used anywhere that "ma" can. "-mab9" is an oxymoron and is confusing the parser. The triangle itself in this context is really a shorthand for "ma7", so it is probably best to write ^7 instead of just ^, but the hard space satisfies the parser's need to see something after the ^ here.

Meanwhile, if you file a bug report, I could look into whether the parser can be tweaked to not get confused by -^b9.

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