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Chord Symbol Input: best method?


Music Spirit

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I have been experimenting with adding chord symbols to music parts and wonder if anyone here has a 'best practise' suggestion'. Have been using the Chord Tool where you click above the note and enter text, then move the cursur to the next beat.

 

1 - What is your preferred font in Text Style setting?

2 - Do you use a different font for Chord Root and Chord Extension? ( Or is this too time consuming? )

3 - Do you have any way of getting the traditional triangle symbol to represent Major 7 chords rather than Maj7?

4 - What is the best way to get the Chord Extension to sit high up next the Chord Root

 

Thanks in advance

 

Adam

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  • 2 years later...

spirit-

 

have you figured this out yet? I just started on my first lead sheet in Logic and am having more problems than anticipated.

 

I would like to do a real book style lead sheet.

 

Any advice on fonts?

 

Also, placement of the chords is tricky. I would love to hear ANYONE's work flow on this to get an idea of how to go about it.

 

I'm almost ready to switch back to writing by hand, so any help would be appreciated!!

 

great questions above from spirit- I would like to know the answers to all of them.

 

(I'm using L9)

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1 - What is your preferred font in Text Style setting?

2 - Do you use a different font for Chord Root and Chord Extension? ( Or is this too time consuming? )

3 - Do you have any way of getting the traditional triangle symbol to represent Major 7 chords rather than Maj7?

4 - What is the best way to get the Chord Extension to sit high up next the Chord Root

 

Hi Lawgic

 

Amazing that you dug out my old post of over 2 years ago... !

 

I can only speak now for Logic 8 - whose implementation in this area is actually WORSE than Logic 7 for all kinds of reasons which are not worth rehearsing here because nostalgia is the enemy of dealing with the present

 

1 -FONTS: Make sure your computer's font set are in good shape. Mine are at the moment a bit messed up hence in the example below, the chord symbol fonts are a bit 'Henry Mancini' for my own hip taste...

 

http://i364.photobucket.com/albums/oo82/dogliege/Picture1-2.png

 

I am still search for the ultimate chord font and Logic does not provide Real Book style fonts as good as Sibelius .. but I like Marker Felt font and also Inkpen. I did purchase a set of Swingtext Fonts ages ago from someone on the internet - cant remember - but lo and behold the joyous buggy implementation of Logic 8 meant that using 3rd Party Fonts caused all kinds of weird ledger lines to appear and it took ages to diagnose the problem. So I didnt even both to load the 3rd party fonts when I got L8 and for safety am sticking strictly to internal fonts (Apple Mac standard)

 

2 - If you have got your head round the issue of Textstyles, it is worth setting up and experimenting with different sizes for both Chord Root and Chord Extension. This can be made to look quite acceptable but it depends on the number of staves on the page and the number of bars per line... for a Lead Sheet it is pretty easy to make it look OK.

 

3 - There is a way to use the Triangle symbol for Maj 7 chords but I forgot how ( though I would like to know..) but normally I just write Maj7

 

4 - The Chord Extension size depends on the font - I assume you are familiar with double clicking on a Chord Symbol to bring up the box which gives you a choice as to which level of the chord you want to place the extension. There is no set thing I can tell you beyond suggesting you experiment.

 

* * * *

 

Another few points regard Chord Symbols:

 

• the spacing for a bass root note underneath a chord is completely crap( see above example) and inflexibly useless. If I have a chord say G7b9 over Db with the traditional slash, I have not found a way to make it *compress* enough to fit nicely into the stave, especially if the other chords are close by or if you are putting chords in a Piano Part between the Treble and Bass Clef - I have yet to find a really satisfactory solution to this...

 

• when inputting chords with roots, do all the chords first as if they had no root. This is the fastest way to TAB from note to note, beat to beat putting chords in - then go back afterwards and double click each chord the needs a bass note in the symbol and add them in the box below

 

• Experiment as well with the 2 settings in Layout>Extended Layout Parameters Chord Alignment and Chord Symbol Accidental Scale which affects the size of the sharp and flat signs designating a chord such as Bb or F#

 

• It is often advisable to do a completely blank instrument with just the chords on ( in a Treble Score Style) then you can cut and paste the chords into different parts ( best done in Score View as opposed to Page View in the Score Editor)

 

* * *

 

HTH ... and HTPSMKTMTC ( hope this provokes someone more knowledgable than me to contribute) :)

 

best

 

MS

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