Re: Hello! and question about jazz chords

[Carl D. Sorensen]

On 2/10/09 9:09 PM, "Tim McNamara" <address@hidden> wrote:

> 
> But with jazz lead sheets there has been one problem, which has been
> commented on in some previous threads- the use of routine jazz chord
> extensions.  I have not been able to figure out how to get LP to
> print anything like a m7b5 or a 7#9 or a 7b9 using \chordmode.  This
> is difficult with a song like "Angel Eyes" which has a good half-
> dozen of these types of chords.  Currently I am writing in those
> extensions by hand because it's just the simplest solution.  Looking
> at the archives there seemed to be various solutions that seemed
> rather kludgy to me.  It seems like I ought to be able to type
> something like d2:m7b5 and get that chord on the page.  I am used to
> the Real Book chord expression conventions, which are familiar to
> most if not all jazz musicians and are more or less the de facto
> standard in the US, at least.
> 

There are two issues at play here, and I think it will be helpful to
separate them.

The first is entering the chords.  LilyPond has what in my opinion a
reasonable way of entering chords in chordmode.  It doesn't accept :m7b5,
but it does accept :m7.5-.  It is pretty straightforward to do this, but it
does require the user to understand the chord structure of the chord, not
just the name.  I think it's a very workable solution.  (BTW, :m7b5 would be
very difficult to parse, because b is a note, not a flat symbol.)

Unfortunately, at the present, LilyPond doesn't do a great job of displaying
jazz chord names.  This is something I hope to fix in the next two months,
but right now the time for me to work on this is almost non-existent due to
work demands.

You can easily make your own chord exceptions list which will cover the
chords you want to use.  An example of how this can be done is shown in the
manual (Selected snippets of Notation Reference 2.7.2).  You can also view
this discussion on lilypond-user:

<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.lilypond.general/44742/focus=44754>
 
You can put the exceptions list in a separate .ly file and \include it in
any leadsheet you create, so you won't need to figure it out more than once.
In fact, a good thorough jazz chord name exceptions list would be a very
nice addition to the LilyPond Snippet Repository.  Perhaps this is a way you
could contribute to the ongoing improvement of LilyPond.

If you have further questions about this, please ask them.  I'll be happy to
provide any support I can to help you get this figured out, particularly if
it can be turned into an LSR contribution.

Thanks,

Carl