Chord naming conventions (was: triangle chord notation)

[Andre Schnoor]

Maybe this could contribute to the discussion regarding chord input 
syntax. Below is an excerpt of chord names which are currently supported 
by my software Harmony Navigator. Last year I've had a fruitful 
discussion on rec.music.theory with Joey Goldstein. I found his 
suggested "standard" quite usefull, because it is relatively easy to 
parse and a human-readable standard at the same time.

The general idea is to have some convenience shortcuts immediately 
following the root pitch (e.g. 'maj7', 'm', '7') that start an initial 
interval structure. Then, additional intervals can be added in brackets, 
each separated by a comma. A software can either lookup shortcuts in a 
dictionary/map or parse the list of intervals in the brackets and add 
them to the final structure. That's the input so far.

Regarding the printed output, I'd like to suggest a dictionary/map that 
maps interval structures to text/graphics markups. This map can be 
customized to arbitrary styles without problems. If a certain entry is 
missing from the map, the original input string could be used as a 
fallback, printed with an uppercase intial letter and the rest in 
superscript.

The parsing is unambigous in any case, while printing becomes a matter 
of taste and personal preference to a large extent. I believe that is 
ok. What do you think?

Andre

--

dim
m.dim7
m7(b5)
m
m6
m7
m7sus
m7(b9)
m9
m11
m13
m(maj7)
m6(add9)
m(#5)
m7(#5)
(b5)
dim7
7(b5)
7(b5,#9)
maj7(b5)
''  empty = Major
(add2)
(add4)
6(add4)
6
7
7(b9)
7(b9,#9)
9
7(9,11,13)
7(9,#11)
7(9,13)
7(#9)
7(13)
maj7
maj7(add4)
maj7(9)
maj7(9,11)
maj7(13)
(add9)
6(add9)
aug
7(#5)
maj7(#5)
sus2
sus4
7sus
7sus4(10)