Skip to main content
Topic: Guitar Chord Symbols (Read 4151 times) previous topic - next topic

Guitar Chord Symbols

Can we look forward to having a bank of guitar chord symbols that can be placed on the scores in future revisions?

Re: Guitar Chord Symbols

Reply #1
That's a good question, I dunno.  In the meantime, you might be interested in a couple of fonts that can be used as text to place symbols.

The first is Robert Allgeyers's "Fretqwik" and the second is contained in my alternative font suites, characterised by a "Dings" name.
fretqwik:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful/fretqwik400k.zip

My Dings suites:
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/helpful.html#Fonts

Fretqwik allows you to create chord diagrams and the Dings suites contain fonts called *Chord.  E.G. in the SwingDings suite is a font called SwingChord.  This font contains the tools to create text entries that have a good format for chord naming.

Have a look and if you want more information then by all means ask.

BTW, if you haven't yet explored User Tools then I encourage you to do so.  Especially, in this context, Andrew Purdams Transpose Text Chords tool.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Guitar Chord Symbols

Reply #2
Rather than enter chord spellings every bar, I use the Lyrics editor to type them all.  They can be aligned easily by setting the Lyric Syllable property, a subset of Note Properties, to Never, for all the notes that won't be used to anchor the chord symbols, and I find this is so very much quicker and easier. 

I haven't checked, but I would think Lawrie's chord font could be used in the lyric editor.  You'd have to change the Page Setup / Fonts / Staff Lyrics font to SwingChord. 

Also, I have a hunch the user tool to transpose chords won't work in the lyric editor. 



Re: Guitar Chord Symbols

Reply #3
I haven't checked, but I would think Lawrie's chord font could be used in the lyric editor.  You'd have to change the Page Setup / Fonts / Staff Lyrics font to SwingChord. 

Also, I have a hunch the user tool to transpose chords won't work in the lyric editor. 

That would be a "Yes" in both cases ;)
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

 

Re: Guitar Chord Symbols

Reply #4
I just went though my latest issue of Sheet Music Magazine (Winter 2009). Of the 15 songs, 14 had chords. None of the 14 had the chords vertically aligned for the entire song. Every song had some chord symbols that had to be moved up to avoid notes, slurs or triplet brackets. This makes Lyrics a poor place to enter chords.

It is a good idea to use a separate layer for the chords. That makes it easy to select a whole system worth and align them without bothering dynamics, tempi, and unrelated text.

ItmightbeJB says he needs a "bank of guitar chord symbols". I take that to mean chord symbols and fret diagrams. I don't see how that can be managed in the Lyric Editor.
Registered user since 1996