On Jun 26, 2007, at 2:39 PM, Raimund Lintzen wrote:
Dear listers,
how can I shorten this chord symbol:
Bbadd9sus4
The spacing of this one takes too much room.
Take a deep breath and pour yourself a stiff drink.
Open up the Chord Suffix Editor. To do that (sigh) you select Manual
Input from the Chord Menu, double-click on the symbol, click Show
Advanced, and down at the bottom beside Suffix ID click Edit. Soak
your mouse finger in ice water, or in the second drink you have
poured yourself.
Now watch it carefully. You can only move ONE item at a time, and
that item is named in the top right-hand box. To change items, hit
Next or Prev.
Get a pencil.
Let's assume you are going to leave "add9" where it is and move
"sus4" so that it is above the add9, like so
sus4
add9
because that is easiest right now, and you are going to run out of
whiskey otherwise.
Note the Horizontal value of the "a" and write it down. Hit Next
until you are on the first "s" in sus. Grab the handle and drag it up
until it is about in the right position above the "a". It never will
be, but the horizontal value will be correct, because you wrote it
down and can enter it in the H box now.
Write down the VERTICAL value that you like for the "s". You will
enter this value manually for the other characters AFTER you have
dragged them to the approximately correct place. Hit Next and drag
the other characters.
OK your way back to the score. View it at 400% (command 4 in Mac,
probably control 4 in Windows.) The kerning will not be correct, but
at least the horizontal alignment will be right! Navigate back to the
Editor and correct spacing as necessary. You will probably be on your
4th drink by now, which will not help the steadiness of your mouse
hand in that tiny window (nudge keys don't work and you can't resize
the window), so you will probably prefer to enter tiny variants of
the numbers in the H box until things look right at 400% in the
score. You can't judge kerning properly in the edit window, because
of onscreen aliasing. Going back and forth between this box and the
score is good for several more drinks, and will ensure that when you
finally crack and try to throw the computer out the window, you will
miss because you are too drunk.
Once this is done, save this new suffix in it's own library, so that
you never have to do this again.
Christopher
BTW, I would use the symbol B42 with the 4 above the 2. Since this
isn't a standard symbol, I would identify it at the start of the
piece, like:
4
B2 = Badd9sus4
I have done similar things in the past with unwieldy chord suffixes
that keep coming back, like Comit3 is C5, Cadd2omit3 is C2, etc.
Christopher
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