Re: Hello! and question about jazz chords

[Carl D. Sorensen]

Note:  copied to lilypond-user; we like to keep discussions on list.


On 2/11/09 5:00 PM, "Tim McNamara" <address@hidden> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Feb 11, 2009, at 6:50 AM, Carl D. Sorensen wrote:
> 
>> On 2/10/09 9:09 PM, "Tim McNamara" <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 

>> 
>> There are two issues at play here, and I think it will be helpful to
>> separate them.
>> 
>> The first is entering the chords.  LilyPond has what in my opinion a
>> reasonable way of entering chords in chordmode.  It doesn't
>> accept :m7b5,
>> but it does accept :m7.5-.  It is pretty straightforward to do
>> this, but it
>> does require the user to understand the chord structure of the
>> chord, not
>> just the name.  I think it's a very workable solution.  (BTW, :m7b5
>> would be
>> very difficult to parse, because b is a note, not a flat symbol.)
> 
> Somehow I have not yet found that way of entering chords in the
> documentation, but the suggestions I've gotten here today have been
> very, very helpful and are very much appreciated.

Have you read Notation Reference 2.7, Chord Notation?  The method for
entering chords is clearly explained there.  If you can't understand it
after reading that part of the documentation, we need to fix the
documentation, so please let us know.

2.7.1. talks about entering chords, and 2.7.2 talks about displaying chord
names.  Please read these sections, and ask any questions you have after
that.

> I take your point
> about ":m7b5" being difficult to parse; there is a reasonable non-
> alphabetic sharp symbol (#) on the keyboard but not one for a flat
> symbol, so using the (-) makes sense.  I find the (+) to denote a
> sharp 9 as in ":7.9+" a bit less intuitive because I see a (+) symbol
> in a chord name as denoting an augmented chord.  But I'll get over
> it.  ;-)

Remember, you're not typing chord names into LilyPond.  LilyPond doesn't
accept chord names.  It just accepts pitches and modifiers.  So the + and -
are exactly equivalent and what you'd expect; + raises a pitch by a half
step and - lowers a pitch by a half step.
> 
>> Unfortunately, at the present, LilyPond doesn't do a great job of
>> displaying
>> jazz chord names.  This is something I hope to fix in the next two
>> months,
>> but right now the time for me to work on this is almost non-
>> existent due to
>> work demands.
> 
> I get the impression that LP was initially designed with engraving
> other music formats in mind; it has amazing flexibility for dealing
> with different musical systems.  This sort of sophistication doesn't
> happen overnight!

LilyPond was started by people who were interested in classical music. I
agree with you; it's amazing that it handles as many different types of
music as it does.

> Since most jazz players just scribble out lead
> sheets by hond, it seems possible that there's been less demand for
> this facility in LP than some other types of music.  The only oddity
> I see in the output of using the ":m7.5-" is that some chords are
> rendered with an extraneous slash (e.g., C7/#9) which could confuse
> some players as it looks sort of like an oddly written slash chord
> and could be interpreted as a C7/D# slash chord (one would hope for
> more common sense than that on the part of the musician, but you
> never know).

I'm not sure that I know exactly how the current chord naming system
evolved.  As far as I can see, nobody who is a jazz musician has ever worked
on fixing the chord naming, so what you see is what you get.

It's possible for you, right now, to make LilyPond do what you want it to in
regards to chord naming for everything *except* slash chords, as far as I
can see.
<snip>

> Thanks much, Carl.  This has (in the one day I have been
> participating) an exceptionally helpful group!

I think that you will find this to continue.

Carl