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Topic: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar (Read 4878 times) previous topic - next topic

how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Instead of composing my songs by keying note by note a set of chord notes, I'd like to know if there is a way to write down a symbol that would allow, like a macro, to write directly chord notes at once.

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #1 –
According to my knowledge, not yet.

However, using a "chord chart" score file as a reference can be of some help.
Thanks to Carl Fritsche (& Jan Hjelm), you can find one in the helpful files "NWC Files" section of the Scriptorium.

STH!
P.S. Les accords y sont nommés en anglais (C, Dm...) et non en français (Do, Ré m...)

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #2 –
This should be then put in the wish list : I'll put it then.

Thank you.

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #3 –
Well, there are so many ways to make some chords, that I doubt it could be really useful. (IMHO!!!)
I prefer to have "toute latitude" (no restriction nor defaults) to enter chords my own way.
It's more work, but it's a lot more creative.
I won't ever let a computer do the creative part: I consider that its role is to be an assistant, not the leader.

<OffTopic MODE>This discussion should quickly lead to "where computers' help should start and stop", but I believe that in some manner, the ability of doing something via computer limits creativity. I noticed this many times, as in advertisement for instance: a new picture effect was made available ("paper torn letting you view what's behind" effect) and for 2 months, all ads used that.
What a pity.</OT MODE>

There are some "high-level" music programs that allow this. Some of my friends use them professionaly, but they rarely use this facility, unless they want to write "musique au mètre" (meter music??), instead of full creation (BIAB should do what you need in that case). Otherwise they write the chords themselves, often with notes missing or "renversement" (a note being placed on another octave).

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #4 –
In fact, a friend of mine creates his own songs (rock) , plays the guitar with a bass guitar guy and a drum guy. Since they write already their songs they are interested by a tool that would facilitate their scores to be registered officially at the SACEM : They find NWC interesting but are looking for shortcuts to key in directly intended chored notes.

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #5 –
Assuming that you'll be doing a lot of this (notating songs for registration purposes) you could use the "toolbox" approach. Make a staff containing all the chords you're likely to use, along with the text expression of the chord name, and save it as a file like "chords.nwc". Then when you're working on a new song, open chords.nwc and the new song in two separate windows (perhaps use the Windows->Tile option) and dip into your toolbox to grab (copy) chords and text, then paste them into your new work.

It's still quite a bit of work, but you have to do it only once.

HTH

Fred

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #6 –
..and yes, we definitely need a single-note editing facility.

Robin

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #7 –
Yes, I'd like it to be easier to enter chords - not necessarily using a tool to guess the notes of a chord, but entering multiple notes in the same location, particularly notes of a different length.
At the moment, you can only enter chords from a keyboard if all the notes are the same length, and you press all of the keys at once. If you want notes of different lengths, or, like me, you're a lousy keyboard player, it would be nice to be able to enter chorded notes from the keyboard, rather than positioning the cursor and pressing Ctrl+Enter.
How about if you press Ctrl (say) when pressing a key, the new note adds itself to the note immediately to the left, rather than after it?
I'm off to the wish list with this one!

Robin

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #8 –
And what you can add to the wish list Robin, is a way to more easily modify a note within chored notes afterwards : i.e. make the note length smaller or bigger then initially typed; or move it upper or lower then initially typed.

Michel.

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #9 –
Well, Robin, the Ctrl idea seems a good one to me, except that you need to have your midi keyboard not far away from your PC keyboard.
And this wouldn't work with Virtual Piano :(
I think another approach would be to use the 2nd pedal on the midi kbd, but I don't know if this is always available??

Otherwise, you can change the input midi settings, making them "large" enough to let you the time of arpegging the notes of your chord and taking it as a single chord (increase the note duration in the setup)

Michel: yes, sort of automatic "one staff per note" to edit chord could be a good thing. Currently we have to delete the wrong note, check the attributes (length, stem, altération…), then Ctrl+Enter. A bit tedious when copying chords from one place to another and there is a differing note. But as Fred says, a "chords.nwc" file can help (it's simpler than an extra "travail/calepin" staff).
The "chord reference.nwc" (see reply 1) may help to create this more quickly (just remove the chords you don't need).

Considering drums, I think there is already some rhythmic templates, within NWC or on the Scriptorium. I'll release mine if someone's interested.

Re: how to enter simply chord notes for guitar

Reply #10 –
To get round your problem with Virtual Piano, Marsu, there could be a "sticky" version, so that notes carried on overwriting until the key was pressed again.

Robin