Re: .scm files

[Atte André Jensen]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, James Hammons wrote:

> > I'm trying to figure out how to change the (IMO) wrong defs in the
> > american chord-style, or pref add a "jazz-style".
> 
> What's wrong with the american chord style?  Did you check
> american-chords.ly to see how they should look?  IMO, I think that if you're
> looking for chords for jazz lead sheets that you mess with the jazz style
> (if it exists--at last check I thought it did)...

Did I check the american chord style??? I'm not saying that that's wrong,
I'm just saying that no chord-style is availabel that conforms to common
jazz practice (if such exists, at least I can't find anything that
looks like what I'm used to). But since I'm almost finished with we will
soon have one :-) In short a jazz style would do the following:

The standard chord structure is the 7th chords. Examples:

C-E-G-B would be notated as C triangle
C-Eb-G-B = Cm triangle
C-Eb-Gb-Bbb = Co (no "/7" as in the american chord style)
C-Eb-Gb-Bb = C slashed o
C-E-G-A = C6 (no "maj" as in the american chord style )

This exemplifies IMO what would be used to write harmonization for a jazz
standard. A Chick Corea piece might call for explicit extentions, but in a
jazz standard you would normally just write "C7" for a C dominant chord
and let it be up to the player to use his ear (and look at the melody) and
figure out what extensions to use.

> 
> > If I make changes to the
> > chord-names.scm nothing changes, should something be recompiled, and if
> > so: what? I have installed Lily from rpm's...
> 
> You don't have to recompile anything.  You only have to edit
> chord-names.scm.  Now that I'm looking at it, it doesn't seem that there is
> a separate jazz style.  Perhaps there should be?  I would assume (Jan?) that
> it would take a form similar to
> 
> (define chord::names-alist-jazz '())
> (set! chord::names-alist-jazz
>     (append
>       '(
> 
> ; Jazz chord name definitions go here
> 
>        )
>      chord::names-alist-jazz))
> 
> I can write it if you can tell me how it deviates from the existing american
> style...  Again, look at input/test/american-chords.ly and tell me what
> should be different.

I have 95% done that, as .scm files contain almoste exactly what I have in
the attached file. Don't steel my project ;-) No of cource, I'm just
kidding. Maybe we should have some discussion here about what to
implement and them in one or more styles.

So I'll have to try editing chord-names.scm again to see if I can get the
changes here to be reflected in the output...

-- 
Atte André Jensen