Re: Working on "completed" jazz chord list - lengthy business

[Jan Nieuwenhuizen]

Amelie Zapf <address@hidden> writes:

> At the moment I'm working to complete the jazz chord list. Did some
> permutations of chord tones with a perl script, took out the really crappy 
> ones
> and still arrived at 700+ possible combinations. There's still some crap in
> there, so it will be less. Does it have to be implemented in a "list"
> fashion, or can it be modular? Because a list will lengthen it quite a bit
> (along with being an awful lot of work).

I very much want to avoid lists longer than say 50 chords.  You should
try to find a basic pattern, so that all names can be generated.  The
exceptions will all be wrong, but only those should be handled by the
list.

The Banter style chord name algorithm is fairly simple:

  * upcase letter of first note as chord name, eg C,D..
  * for all other notes: add numeral step, accidental encoded as +/-,
    eg C 3+/5+/5-
  * leave out steps that are natural to chord, eg, C 7/9/11 -> C 11
    (modulo the mangling of accidental of 7, which i *never* understand)

there must be some rules like that for jazz chords?

Maybe we just need a small modification to the Banter style chord name
algorithm?

-- 
Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden> | GNU LilyPond - The music typesetter
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien       | http://www.lilypond.org