Minor-major seventh chord symbol - suggestion

Dorico
1

The attached jpg shows the symbol I created for minor-major seventh chords - a triangle above a minus sign.

It’s used by Mark Levine in “The Jazz Theory Book”.

Before making it, I checked Engraving Options > Chord Symbols, and didn’t see it. If I missed something, please let me know.

I’m grateful for Dorico’s chord symbol editor, but since this book widely used in jazz education and highly acclaimed, IMO this symbol should be coded in as an option.

I like it because the stacked elements take up less horizontal space. And, like with ø instead of mi7(b5), once you know what it means, it’s more concise than mi(#7), mi(ma7), etc.
Min-Maj-seventh-chord-Dorico.jpg

2

Change the following three items in Chord Symbol Engraving options:
Appearance of minor triads to Minus
Appearance in minor or augmented chords to Triangle
Triangle appearance in minor or augmented chords to Omit 7

This will yield a chord name followed by minus sign followed by Triangle. In my version of Mark Levine’s Jazz Piano book (1989 version), this is what is used for these chords.

3

My mistake - original post updated. The symbol I described is in “The Jazz Theory Book” (1995). The attached image is from that book.

I still prefer the more compact symbol.
Minor-major-seventh-chord-symbol-Levine-Theory-Book.jpg

4

Yesterday I did the following:

  1. Created a Cminor-major seventh chord in a test project.

  2. Edited the symbol to get the stacked appearance described above.

  3. Went to Engraving Options > Chord Symbols > Project Default Appearances and moved the new symbol from “Single Overrides” up to “Project Default Appearances”.

  4. Clicked “Save as Default”. I thought/hoped this would save it as a default for further projects.

  5. To test, I quit and restarted Dorico, then tried entering this chord both on an existing test project and on a new project. It worked - or so I thought.

Today, I opened the first test project and tried again. I typed Fminmaj7, and got Fm∆. When I typed Cminmaj7, I got the custom symbol.

So I guess yesterday I only tested using C as the root.

Is it correct that the custom symbol only applies to the root used when editing?

And if so, is there any way to make it the default for all min-maj 7 chords in all projects?

5

Yes, custom chords are root-specific. There’s not currently a way around that.

6

Thanks, Dan.

OK, Dorico team: this is now a feature request! :slight_smile:

Two, actually: make this minor-major symbol an option, and allow custom symbols to be used for any root.

Thanks!

7

We’ll certainly consider whether we can make this one of the options for the appearance of minor/major 7th chord symbols in future.

1 Like