><guitar chord> = <silence>|<chord>
><silence> = X
><chord> = <root>[<modifier>][/<bass>]
><root> = <note>
><bass> = <note>
><note> = <note letter>[<accid>]
><note letter> = A|B|C|D|E|F|G
><accid> = #|b
><modifier> = m|m7||maj7|dim|aug|!|4|5|6|7|9
This looks reasonable, but it allows no way to write a bare octave (the
commonest kind of chord in bass lines for 18th century Scottish music).
Add 8 as another modifier?
This is a cello or harpsi chord rather than a guitar chord, though. But
shouldn't the chord mechanism support other chordal instruments too, like
mandolin or 5-string banjo? (Laurie's suggestion is fine for Stradella-
bass accordion, so that's one extra covered already). What if anything
would you want to be different for other string things?
One beef. Why are the accidentals given that way? ABC has an irritating
non-uniformity here: you write flats and sharps prefixed with ^ and _ if
they occur as accidentals in the melody line of a piece, b and # postfixed
in the key signature and in chords. Couldn't a uniform notation (^ and _
prefixed everywhere) be supported?
Is this an appropriate moment to suggest throwing in roman-numeral and
figured-bass notations as well?
> I prefer "F#m" to be the canonical way to write the chord of F sharp
> minor because it fits into tadpoles notation more briefly. Long chord
> names just take up too much room, especially if there are several per bar.
How the chords are printed in tadpoles doesn't have to be determined by
how they're represented in the ABC source, does it? A sufficiently
intelligent program, seeing this in a piece in A, could have an option
to print "VI" instead, or write the whole chord part out explicitly on
a separate bass stave. Parsing "F sharp minor" to print "F#m" should
be easy.
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