On Oct 22, 2008, at 4:33 AM, dhbailey wrote:
Darcy James Argue wrote:
You should *never* use just "M" or "m" for chord symbols,
regardless of the font.
I know Christopher disagrees, but I prefer either the geometric
symbols ("∆" and "-"), or "MA" and "mi".
I believe Christopher uses "Cmaj7" (which is okay, though I
*greatly* prefer CMA7) and "Cm7" (which is fine so long as you're
not also using CM7 in the same chart).
Chord symbols like "CM7" are, IMO, entirely unacceptable under any
circumstances.
I'm with Darcy on this one -- when I see a pitch with the letter M
(capital or lower case) and a number, my brain always takes it as
minor.
But I part ways with Darcy on the "CMA7" -- for some reason for me,
seeing a 'j' makes things so much clearer, since 'major' is the
only chord term that uses a j. Put the 'j' in the chord and it's
always clear and easy to read -- "CMAJ7" or "Cmaj7" or "CMaj7"
makes no difference. It's clearly a major chord when the j is
present.
I understand Darcy's point of view - the fewer the symbols and more
differentiated they are, the easier and faster it is to read them,
which is why he likes the geometric symbols (one glyph) over a multi-
character suffix. This becomes obvious with m7(b5) compared with the
slashed circle, and even more so once you start adding extensions to
the m7(b5) suffix, as the b5 (an important indicator of function!)
gets lost along with the less-vital added extensions inside the
parentheses.
It is the "more differentiated" part that makes me dislike MA and MI
or mi, which I find get misread more often because of their similar
length and shape. The MA and mi combination less so (because of the
bigger difference between upper case and lower case) but sometimes in
manuscript the two get to looking very similar. I know we are talking
about computer-generated copy here, but manuscript is still a big
part of jazz and pop music, so we need to use a system that will work
equally well in both.
I ended up making my own suffixes with a lower-case m so I wouldn't
be forced to write Cm7 with the JazzFont's stupid small upper-case m.
I agree completely with Darcy on this. I used Dom Casual (Dom Regular
on some systems) to match the other JazzFont glyphs, but the match is
far from perfect, and the Dom lower case m is somewhat crooked.
I think David's point about the "j" making the difference is a valid
one. It changes the shape of the suffix completely, making it
immediately identifiable. We tend to see "maj" as one shape and "m"
as another.
There is another, perhaps less-important, reason that I favour alpha-
numeric suffixes over geometric ones. You can type them easily in an
email or text. Notice how Darcy's triangle got transliterated to
three different diacriticals in the quote above? I would hate to have
an ASCII issue ruin all my chords.
Christopher
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