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veltzer / openbook

OpenBook is an open source Jazz real book
https://veltzer.github.io/openbook/
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Show half-dim-7th chords as m7b5 instead of circle #32

Closed captbaritone closed 11 years ago

captbaritone commented 11 years ago

This is obviously a matter of taste so I am simply offering it as a suggestion to consider. It also may need some tweaking to make it typographically perfect.

As a classical musician I appreciate the brevity and functional implication of expressing half diminished seventh chords with a slashed circle, but I think it has a few disadvantages. Here are the reasons I see for adopting the m7b5 style:

  1. It's the standard in jazz fakebooks. All but one fakebook I could find used some form of the m7b5 notation. (See list below)
  2. The slashed circle notation is slightly harder to decipher when sight reading. The visual difference between the fully diminished and half diminished symbol is sometimes hard to see.

Even if we do want to implement this, it may be worth waiting to merge in this branch. Currently the flat symbol it renders is slightly larger than the one for a 7b9 chord. Not sure why that is. I could look into that more deeply if this fix appeals to you.

Finally, if you don't like this notation, but think others might, we could think about including it as a compile-time option.

Survey of notation in other fakebooks

Colorodo: Slashed circle Bill Evans: m7b(5) Jazz Fakebook: m7b5 Jazz LTD: m7b(5) Library of Musician's Jazz: Could not find an example New Real Book: mi7(b5) Real Book: -7b5 The Book: -7b5

veltzer commented 11 years ago

I don't know what you mean by that. You mean then halfed circle?

captbaritone commented 11 years ago

The entire figure is slightly larger, I'll try to find an example and I'll add it to the issue.