Seeking Advice on Enhancing Chord Name Display

[Jenix-Park]

Hey,

I'm currently exploring ways to enhance the visibility and aesthetics of chord names in my project. Using the Chord().GetNames() method to display all elements simultaneously seems a bit cluttered and visually unappealing. I've considered using Unicode for musical notations, but it doesn't seem to be the ideal solution.

I prefer not to develop a custom rendering engine for this purpose, nor do I intend to use a workaround involving the replacement of vector graphics with characters.

An idea I'm considering is the use of custom fonts specifically designed for chord symbols. I've found a couple of promising options this and this, but I'm not entirely convinced they're the best fit for my needs.

I have a few questions:

1. Are you aware of any other custom fonts that might be suitable for displaying chord symbols?

2. Regarding the Chord names table, are there any specific aspects I should be cautious about? Would covering all the names in the table eliminate any potential issues?

3. Do you have any suggestions or advice on how to achieve this goal with minimal impact on latency?

Thank you for your assistance.

[melanchall]

Hi,

1. Unfortunately no. I didn't even know about such fonts :-)
2. CNT shows all possible suffixes for chords the library can output.

To understand better what the problem is and what are you trying to fix, can you please show your issue? Maybe a screenshot or something like that.

Thanks,
Max

[Jenix-Park]

@melanchall
Hey,

I think we might not need to make any changes after all. I tested the custom font I mentioned earlier, and it turns out the current style actually works quite well with it. You might want to give it a try yourself; it's available for free download – just enter $0.

While we still need to tweak the output text for more complex chords, simpler ones like D#b5 look pretty sharp as is, with no modifications needed.

Thanks so much for your time and interest in this matter!

[melanchall]

Hi @Jenix-Park,

Well, I'm going to put the feature on hold then :-) Thanks for musical fonts information!

[Jenix-Park]

@melanchall
Hey again!

After testing for a while, I've been thinking about the issue with crowded chords we talked about earlier.
I realized I might not necessarily need special fonts or musical symbols to solve it.

You know, the '#'s, '/', and 'b' characters in the ASCII code have been widely used and understood in music sheets for years.
While using dedicated musical symbols might make things look cooler, we can also make chords easier to read by simply using fewer of them.

At first, I threw all the chord names at users to cover all types of musicians.
But what if we gave users some choices like:

GetNames(ChordNameHint.JazzStyle)
GetNames(ChordNameHint.ClassicalStyle)

This way, they can pick how the chords look – a bit jazzy or with a classical touch.
What do you think about this idea?

[melanchall]

Hi @Jenix-Park,

It's an interesting idea. But unfortunately I don't know what kind of chord notation is jazz or classical one :-(

[Jenix-Park]

@melanchall
No worries!
I'm not a musician myself, but I figured we could tap into ChatGPT for insights on chord notations used by both jazz and classical musicians.

I took a peek at the 'Chords names table.' Initially, I thought you might already have some jazz-style symbols like Δ and +, and a little tweaking with some additional if conditions could do the trick. Turns out, I was mistaken, and it seems like a bit more work is needed.

Thanks for looking into it!