Chord menu

How to get there

Click the Chord tool   to make the Chord menu appear.

What it does

This menu lets you input and edit chords as well as specify whether fretboards will appear.

When the Chord tool is selected, you can enter chords directly into your score. Click on the note or beat to which you want to attach a chord; a blinking cursor appears above the note. Type the chord’s root, suffix and alternate bass note, if any. When you’ve completed one chord, you can move quickly to the next note to continue entering chords; PrintMusic displays the fully formatted chord after you enter it. (See the Keystroke table for a summary of the available keystrokes for entering chords and what they do.)

When you type chords directly on-screen, PrintMusic follows some simple conventions to interpret what chord symbol was entered. A chord symbol is made up of one or more of the following parts: root, suffix, and alternate bass. Although you are not required to enter all parts of a chord symbol, PrintMusic interprets the chord symbol’s root, suffix and alternate bass, in that order.

First, enter the root with any alterations (sharps or flats). For example, type “Eb”, “F” or “G#” (shift-3) to enter an Ef, F or Gs chord, respectively. Second, enter the suffix; PrintMusic will look at the suffix characters you type, if any, and try to find a matching suffix in your document (all suffixes in your document appear in the Chord Suffix Selection dialog box). Last, PrintMusic will check whether the chord should display an alternate note in the bass; enter a slash (/) or an underscore (shift-hyphen) to display the alternate bass next to or below the chord symbol, then enter the alternate bass note with any alterations (sharps or flats).

For example, enter an FMaj7 chord simply by typing “FMaj7”; press the spacebar to enter your chord and move to the next note. Entering chords with alternate bass notes is simple too; add a Cmin7/Bf chord simply by typing “Cmin7/Bb”. PrintMusic knows that you want a flat when you type a lowercase “b”, and that you’d like an alternate bass note when you type the slash. (PrintMusic also intelligently handles alterations in suffixes.) If you prefer to put the root “over” the alternate bass, type “Cmin7_Bb” instead—PrintMusic intelligently determines the difference and displays the chord the way you want it.

Here are more tips:

Display and Entry: PrintMusic displays chords in Standard, Roman, or German style, using the Style checked in the Chord menu. For chord entry, though, you need to type your chords using the Standard style convention.

Fonts: PrintMusic ignores display fonts when you type chords into your score—in fact, all the characters in your chords will appear in a regular text font as you type them. PrintMusic does care about the keystroke, however; for example, even if your chord suffix mixes music characters and regular text characters, PrintMusic will examine only the keys you press when looking for matches.

Alterations: Type a “b” or “#” (shift-3) to tell PrintMusic that the root or alternate bass has a sharp or flat, or that a sharp or flat appears as a character in the suffix. (Just type two or more consecutive characters for other alterations, like double- or triple-sharps.) In rare cases, PrintMusic may not know where an alteration belongs, such as the chords Gf 9 and G f9. In this case, when you type “Gb9”, PrintMusic normally associates the alteration with the root (and will display Gf 9). When you want a suffix that begins with an alteration (such as G f9f13), tell PrintMusic that the alteration isn’t part of the root by typing a comma after the root (in this case, by typing “G,b9b13”).

Suffixes: When typing suffixes, type them as you’d read them. PrintMusic looks at the characters in the order they’re entered when it tries to find a match for the suffix (all suffixes in your document appear in the Chord Suffix Selection dialog box); what you type must match the order of the suffix characters exactly.

Alternate Bass: Type a slash (/), an underscore (shift-hyphen), or a bar symbol (|) to indicate whether an alternate bass note should appear next to, below, or slightly to the right of the chord, respectively. PrintMusic knows that what you type after the slash, underscore or bar is the alternate bass note for the chord.

Capitalization: PrintMusic displays chords like “F” and “e.” When you enter chords, it is case-sensitive. PrintMusic also knows the difference between a lower case “b” chord and the character representing the flat (also a “b”). For example, type a b-flat lowercase chord simply by typing “bb”—PrintMusic knows the first character is the root, but the second is an alteration. Capitalization also matters in suffixes—that’s how PrintMusic distinguishes a “CM7” from “Cm7”.

Special Characters: You can type a “b” for flat and “#” (shift-3) for sharp. PrintMusic also makes other common chord characters available at a keystroke, the diminished “” and half-diminished “” symbols. Since their key combinations may be difficult to remember, PrintMusic offers easy to remember substitutes: the “o” (letter o) and “%” (shift-5) keys add diminished and half-diminished symbols respectively.

Shortcuts: In addition to keystroke shortcuts for musical symbols like diminished and sharp, PrintMusic offers a fast entry shortcut for users who know their PrintMusic suffixes well. If you know a particular suffix’s number, enter a chord with a suffix directly by typing the root, a colon (:), and the number, then move to the next note—PrintMusic adds the suffix automatically. If you don’t remember the number, you can type the root, a colon, a zero (such as C:0), then hit the spacebar; before leaving the current note, PrintMusic will display the Chord Suffix Selection dialog where you can choose the suffix you need. For example, when working with any of PrintMusic’s original default files, you can easily enter a “Cm7(s5)” by typing “C:9” instead of all the individual characters, “Cm7(s5)”. Since the “m7(s5)” suffix appears in slot number 9 in the Chord Suffix Selection dialog box, PrintMusic knows to enter it automatically. If you take a moment to remember the suffixes you use frequently, this shortcut can save you a lot of typing.

Use these keys to perform the indicated actions when you type chords into the score:

• Allow MIDI Input. When you select this option, you can click a note or rest in the score, and a tiny ear icon will appear. PrintMusic will add a chord symbol above the note you clicked when you play the chord on your synthesizer. (It’s “listening” to the chord you play.) The register of the chord you play doesn’t matter, but the inversion does: if you play a C chord with an E on the bottom, PrintMusic will place a C/E chord symbol above the note.

To advance the ear cursor to the next note, press any MIDI instrument key above middle C; to make the ear cursor retreat to the left, play any key below middle C. If you don’t move the cursor in this way, each time you play a chord, each new chord symbol will appear stacked above the previous one.

• Standard Chord Style. Choose Standard Chord Style to display this style for all chord roots and alternate bass notes in the piece. A checkmark appears by the style in use for the piece. The following examples shows the standard style.

• Roman Chord Style. PrintMusic uses Roman numerals to represent the chord root and alternate bass note. An accidental, if present, precedes the chord root. When entering chords, type upper or lowercase letters to determine whether lowercase roman numerals are used. For example, in the key of C Major, C = I, d=ii, e=iii, F = IV, and so on.
• Show Fretboards. When this item is selected, PrintMusic displays full-blown guitar fretboard-chart diagrams beneath each chord symbol in the score (or will do so as soon as you add chord symbols).

PrintMusic uses the Lowercase setting for the Root Scale Tone in the Chord Definition dialog box to determine whether it will display the corresponding major or minor fretboard. When you don’t specify a particular suffix and Lowercase is selected for the Root Scale Tone, PrintMusic will display a minor fretboard; if Lowercase is not selected, PrintMusic will display a major fretboard.

When you choose Show Fretboards a second time, all fretboards disappear.

• Resize Fretboards. Use this command to globally change the size of the guitar fretboards. The Resize Fretboards dialog box will appear. Type the desired percentage of the current size you want to resize the fretboards. See Resize Fretboards dialog box for more information.
• Position Chords · Position Fretboards. When one of these items is selected in the Chord menu, two small triangles appear at the left side of the screen. These triangles govern the position of the baseline for the chord symbols or diagrams (the imaginary horizontal line against which the bottoms of the chord symbols align).

You specify whether you want these triangles to adjust the chord symbols themselves or the guitar-fretboard diagrams by choosing either Position Chords or Position Fretboards from the Chord menu. (Position Fretboards is dimmed if Show Fretboards isn’t selected in the menu.)

Drag the left triangle up or down to move all the chords in the piece. Drag the right triangle, in Page View, to move the chords in this staff in this system only.

• Enable Chord Playback. Check this option to include chord definitions in playback. Uncheck this option to remove chord definitions from playback.

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