Chord symbols

PrintMusic’s chord symbols are intelligent with respect to key; if you decide to change the key, the chord symbols are automatically transposed. Similarly, if you copy chord symbols to a passage in another key, they’ll be transposed when you paste them. Even PrintMusic’s guitar fretboard diagrams, which are created automatically, transpose according to the key.

To enter chord symbols automatically

Occasionally, you may encounter a dialog box telling you that PrintMusic doesn’t recognize the chord you just played (or the chord it just analyzed). You can either choose an available suffix or re-enter the suffix.

• Click the Chord Tool  . The Chord Menu appears.
• If you want to add chord symbols to the score by playing them, one by one, on a MIDI keyboard, choose MIDI Input from the Chord Menu, and then click a note or rest in the score. The ear-shaped cursor appears, indicating that PrintMusic is listening to your MIDI instrument. (Technically, you can’t add a chord symbol to an empty measure. But see “To enter a chord symbol when there’s no note below it.”)

Play a chord, in any register, on your synthesizer; PrintMusic places the chord symbol into the score, aligned with the baseline (controlled by the two triangles at the left side of the screen). If you don’t play the chord in root position, PrintMusic writes it with an alternate bass note, as in “Am/E.”

To advance the ear cursor to the next note position, play any single key above middle C; to move the ear cursor backward to the previous note position, play any single key below middle C. If you play two successive chords without moving the cursor, PrintMusic will stack the chord symbols on top of each other.

To enter chords (Type Into Score)

• Click the Chord Tool  . The Chord Menu appears.
• Choose Type Into Score from the Chord Menu.
• Click on the note on which you want the chord to appear. A cursor appears above the note, aligned with the chord positioning arrows.
• Type the chord that you want to appear in the score, such as “BbM7/C”. Type an underscore (shift-hyphen) instead of a slash if you want the alternate bass note (C in this example) placed under the root. You can also type | (shift-backslash) instead of a slash or an underscore; this will place the alternate bass note below and slightly to the right of the root.

• An alternate method of entering suffixes is to type a colon followed by the slot number of the suffix shown in the Chord Suffix Selection dialog box. Or, type a colon followed by zero. If you type a slot number, PrintMusic displays the corresponding suffix from the Chord Suffix Selection dialog box. If you type a zero, the Chord Suffix Selection dialog box appears, where you can choose a suffix.

• Type uppercase letters unless you want the root and alternate bass note to use lowercase letters.

Tip: Use the Caps Lock key when you know you want only uppercase chords—to enter a flat symbol with Caps Lock engaged, press shift-B (for lowercase).

• Press enter to accept the change. Or, press spacebar, tab, or shift-right arrow to move to the next entry, or click the next note on which you want a chord to appear. To move to the previous entry, press shift-spacebar, shift-tab, or shift-left arrow.

If PrintMusic doesn’t recognize the suffix, a dialog box appears in which you can choose an available suffix from the chord suffix library.

• If you want to enter or edit another alternate chord on the same note, press the up or down arrows.
• Continue entering the chords in this manner.

To edit chords (Type Into Score)

• Click the Chord Tool  . The Chord Menu appears.
• Choose Type Into Score from the Chord Menu.
• Click on the note containing the chord you want to edit.
• If more than one chord is assigned to the same note, press the up and down arrows to select the chord you want to edit.
• Select the portion of the chord you want to change, and type the change.
• Press enter to accept the change. Or, press the spacebar, tab, or shift-right arrow to move to the next entry, or click the next note on which you want a chord to appear. To move to the previous entry, press shift-spacebar, shift- tab, or shift left-arrow.

If PrintMusic doesn’t recognize the suffix, a dialog box appears in which you can choose an available suffix from the chord suffix library.

To move chord symbols

• Click the Chord Tool  .
• Click the staff containing the chord symbols. Two small arrows appear at the left edge of the screen. These arrows control the baseline for the chord symbols—the line against which the bottoms of the chord symbols align. (Make sure Position Chords is selected in the Chord Menu.)
• Drag the positioning arrows up or down. Drag the left triangle up or down to move all the chords in the piece. Drag the right triangle, in Page View, to move the chords in this staff in this system only.

To enter a chord symbol when there’s no note below it

Thus far, you’ve seen that chord symbols must be attached to a note or rest (except that you can’t attach them to PrintMusic’s default whole rests). There will certainly be times, however, when you want to put a chord symbol where no note appears—such as several chord symbols over a single whole note, or even over a blank measure.

Begin by entering the whole note (or whatever notes you want to appear) in Layer 1 (or 2 or 3). If you’ve already entered them in Layer 4, it’s easy to send them into another layer; see Multiple voices—To move music from one layer to another. Once you’ve emptied Layer 4, proceed as follows:

• Enter “dummy” notes in Layer 4, one for each chord symbol you’ll want to add. It makes no difference what pitches you select; these notes won’t appear.
• Attach chord symbols to the “dummy” notes in the usual way. See To enter chord symbols automatically.
• Click the Speedy Entry Tool  . Click on a “dummy” note.
• Press the letter H (or the letter O) to hide the note. The “dummy” note vanishes, and your chord symbols remain in place. Using the Speedy Entry Tool, however, you can still view your hidden Layer 4 notes (for spacing purposes, for example).

In Layer 4, add some “dummy” notes, and attach your chord symbols to them. In Layer 1 (or 2 or 3), enter the whole note (or whatever music you want ultimately to appear). When you hide the dummy notes with the letter H (or O), the notes disappear, leaving the chord symbols behind.

To prevent chord symbols from playing back

• From the Window Menu, choose Instrument List. The Instrument List appears.
• Click on the arrow next to the name of the staff that has chords attached. The list expands to display the components of the staff, including Chords.
• Click the square next to Chords in the P column. The chord symbols will no longer playback from this staff.