Finale Forum

I'm a jazz guitarist but write out piano charts for my more pop oriented tunes. On those tunes I like to put the guitar chord name and fretboard over the melody line.

With Allegro and Finale you can create your own fretboard voicings but cannot with PrintMusic. Some of the voicings they give you, however, make no sense. See the attached picture; that first Ab Major on the 11th fret is not what I would use next to the two chords that follow it; I would use the one down on the 4th fret. That Eb7 is not the voicing I would use in this instance either. The ""m" in "maj" should be capitalized in my opinion as well.

If Finale is not going to let us create our own fretboards in the mid-level software they should at least give us a choice of a couple of voicings.

The ones in Songwriter were actually better and "M" was capitalized too!

Nice wish, but I doubt it's gonna happen. However, I definitely agree about the upper case M in Maj7.

miker wrote:Nice wish, but I doubt it's gonna happen. However, I definitely agree about the upper case M in Maj7.

Miker,

It seems like a small thing but you're probably right.

A good thing would be to have the fretboard choices all be low on the neck and barre chords where applicable.

I never put fretboards in jazz charts, only in pop charts, so at least about 50% of my tunes will look fine.

I do agree that more customization of tablature and percussion maps would be nice. However, I am slightly confused by one assertion:

miker wrote:...I definitely agree about the upper case M in Maj7.

So does MakeMusic, apparently. What version are y'all running? The attached pic is from PM 2009. I entered them by typing in the chord names. When I tried to enter "Abmaj7" the chord entry system balked.

Note also the placement at the 3rd and 4th frets, rather than the 11th. Is that what was preferred?

TWW wrote:I do agree that more customization of tablature and percussion maps would be nice. However, I am slightly confused by one assertion:

miker wrote:...I definitely agree about the upper case M in Maj7.

So does MakeMusic, apparently. What version are y'all running? The attached pic is from PM 2009. I entered them by typing in the chord names. When I tried to enter "Abmaj7" the chord entry system balked.

Note also the placement at the 3rd and 4th frets, rather than the 11th. Is that what was preferred?

Tom,

I'm using PM 2010 which I just purchased. They are capitalized in 2009 apparently, but not in 2010.

paynow wrote:I'm using PM 2010 which I just purchased. They are capitalized in 2009 apparently, but not in 2010.

Eeww! A disincentive to upgrade.

TWW wrote:

paynow wrote:I'm using PM 2010 which I just purchased. They are capitalized in 2009 apparently, but not in 2010.

Eeww! A disincentive to upgrade.

Here's something I just discovered. If you just write CM7 it will tell you that it doesn't recognize the extension and would you like to choose one, etc, but you can get "CM" if it's combined with an altered fifth, etc. You can also get M9. Notice also that you can get the "triangle" symbol which I use occasionally to make room when chord names are crowded.

Notice, however, the odd C "triangle" 7 fretboard and the other for CM7(b5) which don't indicate the bottom two strings of the guitar. The (b5) voicing is good; it's C-Gb/F#-B-E and even though the extension is voiced lower it works because the chord is high up on the neck. The CM7 voicing is one is the same one being used for Cmaj7 but for some reason with two strings not showing. Odd. A newbie guitarist would have to figure out what strings to play. I've only seen very old fake books with those four note jobbers.

I think with me using Maj7 is a matter of preference; I've read books on arranging that tell you it's wrong and that everything should be lower case. These books also completely disdain the use of triangles, circles, minus signs (C-7) and other geometric shapes.

Sigh...I just want a choice really...

Over at the MakeMusic "official" forum, Mike Rosen mentions that the PM 2010 ":0" form of chord entry, such as "A:0", is now serving up a menu of almost 300 suffixes.

Amazingly, "Maj7" is not among them.