Warning: importing chords into Dorico

Daniel, I’m truly only pointing at things that I believe many users like me (will) react on of/when starting to use Dorico. The only reason I respond now is that I kust found some comments to what I have written. I know you know my viewpoints already, and I’m sure you know that I appreciate that you have implemented many things I sent you emails about a while ago, brilliant chord symbol implementation, for instance. And I certainly look forward to the changes I know you plan.

Regarding material that’s imported as MIDI (and not XML), I stand by my words about split stems - but certainly don’t need to discuss that anymore; anyone who has read what I wrote already know that I don’t think split stems is a good solution when importing maj7 chord as MIDI files.

" you can easily prevent Dorico from using split stems via the Notation Options dialog …" Let me first say that I don’t really feel that I’m “complaining” as such (but there is some ‘vent’ into this as well), but if it would been ‘complaining’, it would have been about the defaults (still talking about displaying maj7 chords from a MIDI file with split stems or not here), not about Dorico not being able to show these chords the normal way upon MIDI import (or at least without split stems as a default). And btw, I’m very thankful for the various tips I pick up on these discussions from various users and staff members, and you in particular.

I don’t expect to be using Dorico ‘for real work’ until things like real time MIDI recording and draggable notes are in. Personally, I even dislike recording to a click, so I often record without - and use reclocking/beat mapping/time warping afterwards… As a piano player, entering music in step time feels very …wrong/unmusical for me. MIDI import is therefore important for my kind of… ‘user group’, and will be for a while.

Btw, seeing that the Dorico team works in depth on each ‘function area’ before entering new stuff will of course that it can take time before some of us it feels ready for use, but I like and agree in your approach. What looks like complaining is mainly impatience, I guess, but based on what I just wrote, I don’t actually expect Dorico to be ready for becoming a main app for people like me for at least a year, maybe two. Sorry if this seems like only venting or even being provocative - I truly think that Dorico is the most interesting thing that has happened in music software for several years, and Steinberg’s interest in notation has made me a lot more interested in the company and Cubase as well. If you think this being deliberately provocative, I wonder what Logic fans when I share my viewpoints about Logic’s (lack of) development in what I consider the most important areas think!

ETA: I edited the previous post now, just to make it clear to random readers who I may have given the false impression that Dorico shows maj7 chords with dual stems when they are entered in using step input in Dorico.

You can easily find hundreds (probably thousands) of them in classical music. Wikipedia explains what they are (not to mention the Italian and French varieties, which don’t have the same notes as a dominant 7th chord).

A “semi-literate” description of a typical German 6th chord progression in C would be Ab7 C/G G7 C. But the Ab7 isn’t functionally an Ab7. Maybe you prefer to describe it as some sort of tritone substitution for Dm in a “II V I” progression.

When I wrote “Spelling a 7-chord right shouldn’t be that difficult”, I was referring to the maj7 chords in my example. So, if we should keep the chord stuff in the keep-it-simple mode: if we are talking about actual plain chord symbols and not roman numerical analysis of any kind, I wouldn’t have written the maj7 chord in my example as Ab C Eb F#. In your example, Ab7/C could be also be written as Ab/Gb, but we’ll easily get lost of we both discuss chord symbols and chord analysis, and additionally mix up the ‘jazz’ way of using roman numeral numbers and the classical way.
Finding the correct chord symbol in all situation can in some cases require some serious thinking, but relevant to this topic, I’m all for keeping it simple Not only is it too early to expect Dorico to perform advanced analysis or always choose the ‘correct’ way of displaying a chord - computers (or humans, but computers in particular) may never be able to always do that.

Poor Dorico has to do a lot of guesswork, and doesn’t know if the user is thinking ‘jazz-numerical’ or ‘classical-numerical’, but my humble opinions is that the notes, when possible, should stick to using the same accidentals a plain chord symbol (Real Book style) would do, and maybe there could be several modes or maybe Dorico already is designed to think different than the defaults I personally happen to prefer. So, since this was meant as a thread about best defaults would be when importing chords via MIDI ir XML, I think I’ll leave at that. :slight_smile:

Fair enough, but I would think that a “7-chord” means any type of 7th, not just maj7.

But communication by Chinese whispers is often more fun than actually understanding what the other guy is talking about :wink:

Fair enough, because the way I usually think (“there are two major kinds of 7-chords: major 7, which is written maj7 (eg Cmaj7), and plain 7-chords, which are just written with with a 7 (eg C7)” is already confusing. So no wonder Chinese whispers comes easy.

What did minor 7th chords do to make you put them on your “ignore list”? Or diminished or half-diminished 7ths?

I admit I prefer thinking about all this mess the 17th/18th century way. They are all just 7ths. Whether they are major, minor, or dominant 7ths is just a matter of what scale degree the root is, unless you choose to raise or lower the 7th by a semitone.

Life was a lot simpler before Rameau published his textbook claiming that chords had “inversions”. Before then (1744) everybody thought C-E-G , E-C-G and G-C-E were three completely different chords - and in many ways, they were right IMO.

I noted the short shrift given other types of 7th chords too, but I suppose that, if inversions don’t matter, some folks would just consider them chords with an added 6th (a very jazz-style way of interpreting them). That frequently catches me off guard when I enter chords via a MIDI keyboard, but it’s not the program’s fault.

I suppose there may be some mismatch between the PS13 algorithm and jazz usage anyway, since (from my understanding of the documentation) PS13 uses two factors to choose a spelling - the implied key of the music, and the voice leading. If the musical scale and the voice leading don’t match common practice harmony, the result might be “oops…”

I find that it works pretty well! Sometimes, I wish there was a way to speficy a temporary key change for distant modulations, or that the algorithm would pay some attention to the chord symbols. But I understand that this is very complex stuff. In general, I’m pleased and impressed :slight_smile:

Hi Rob, I wrote “After one has learnt minor and major chords, the next three chords people learn are usually minor 7…” etc. :slight_smile:

Re. diminished and half diminished… I just happen to see major, minor, minor 7, dominant 7 and maj7 as the most major ones, for beginners. The others you mentioned are more minor. :stuck_out_tongue: