[LAU] [Fwd: Re: Lilypond and Jazz chords]

Atte André Jensen atte.jensen at gmail.com
Fri May 29 16:26:03 EDT 2009


Carl D. Sorensen wrote:

> Yes, this is what is needed.  But I have a reference for chord naming at
> 
> http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory17.htm#namechords
> 
> If this is wrong, then corrections would be appreciated.

That look pretty good, I disagree here and there (some small some larger 
objections), but I like the fact that he includes the 
sometimes-fighting-against-each-other-names (for instance some people 
can spend hours discussing why "C5" is correct and "C(omit3)" is not).

I think a complete, consistent definition of what names IMO are 
considered good practice in Europe, would be the most useful to you. Did 
you consider implementing several parallel naming conventions? I think 
that would be best, since different people insist on a certain name for 
a chord, and those "certain names" often fall in sets that seems to be 
geographically oriented.

> Note that for this part, I'm only concerned about the naming, not the
> symbols. 

What do you mean by "naming"?

> I do see disagreement between what Dolmetsch says about C/E and what
> Juergensen says:
> 
> <http://chrisjuergensen.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/chords_symbols_1.htm>

There's something fishy in his argumentation for C,D,G = Csus2. I think 
he is wrong there.

> Dolmetsch says the 5th in a C/E is below the C; Juergensen says it's above.
> That's the only contradiction I've found so far.

IMHO that's nonsense, sorry. Chord symbols don't translate into voicings 
like that. Here and there there are rules, but that more like good 
practices and people like Monk and Ellington breaks them all the time. I 
actually don't see where any of the links you mentions claim anything 
about the 5th being above or below the root?

Actually that was one of the things I found odd the last time I looked 
at lilypond (maybe it has changed): To get it to write the chord cymbol 
C13 I had to write a big, fat chord that spelled like "C, E, G, Bb, D, 
F, A" and sounds like... not so nice, I'm sorry. Nobody would ever voice 
a C13 like that! A simple voicing would be C, E, Bb, D, A (has to have C 
one octave below middle C) but there are endless other possibilities.

> Anyway, I'd welcome any corrections to these naming rules, or if you have
> your own complete set of these rules already written out, I'd be happy with
> that as well.

As already mentioned, I think that a couple of well defined "systems" or 
"logics" for chord names should be included, one fairly well defined one 
that even has it's own name is Berklee, one that I'm not too familiar 
with unfortunately.

-- 
Atte

http://atte.dk   http://modlys.dk   http://virb.com/atte



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