FrettyCharts Help Manual

Getting Started

Introduction

Sample Gallery

Using the Application

Managing Projects

Product Registration

Editing

Adding a Chord

Adding a Scale

Adding a Group

Editing Chords

Editing Scales

Setting the Tuning

Rendering

Render Project

Render Item

Printing

Styles

Managing Styles

General Settings

Preview

Colors

Text and Fonts

Sizing

Spacing

Fret Layout

Markers

Barre Chords

Display Items

Project Settings

HTML Rendering

MIDI Audio

Chord Naming Rules

Project Settings - Chord Naming Rules

The Chord Naming settings are saved with your FrettyCharts project file and can be edited from the "Project" menu by selecting "Chord Naming Settings". The following window will appear:

Special Symbols

The first section allows you to enter the symbols/text that will appear for common chord naming conventions. In any of these text fields you can use text such as "min" for the minor chord example. This means that whenever FrettyCharts tries to name a minor chord it will use this text.

Another example is the major 7th chord. Above, we see the text "maj7" has been entered, and FrettyCharts will use this to name chords, eg. Gmaj7, Cmaj7 etc...

However, another naming convention is to use a triangle for major 7th chords. To signify this, position the cursor in the Major 7th text field, and then click the "Triangle" button below.

The text <maj7> will appear in the text field. The angled brackets signify a special symbol to FrettyCharts, and will be replaced with a triangle during rendering, as shown below:

 The same is true for the other symbol types, shown in the table below.

Superscripts

In the Cmaj7 example above, the triangle and 7 are written as superscript text. For any item in the editor above, you can switch between normal text and superscript text using the drop-down list adjacent.

NOTE: a special case occurs with the "#,b in root note" entry. While you can force this to display as a superscript, you may find the symbol size becomes quite small. Provision is made for this when you set the #/b symbol font size and Y-adjustment in the style editor. Either way works, but be aware the using both together might interfere. Also, these chord naming settings apply to ALL rendering in this project, whereas the style editor only applies to that particular style.

The following table summarizes each entry in the naming settings:

Naming Item	Description	Special Symbol
Major	Generally left blank (eg. C, G, F)
Minor	Usually notated with "min"
Augmented	Usually notated with a "+", or the text "aug"
Diminished	Usually notated with a special symbol or the text "dim"
Flattened	Used in chords where a note has been flattened, for example C-5 has a flattened 5th.
Sharpened	Same as above, but for sharpened notes. eg. C+5 has a sharpened 5th
Suspended	Applies to chords where the 3rd has been replaced with a 2nd or 4th. Generally the text "sus" is used.
Major 7th	Often notated with a triangle, or as "maj7".
Added Note	Used for chords that add notes, for example Cadd9, is a C major chord with a D added in. Usually notated as "add".
Omitted	A notation that is often discarded, used to show when a 3rd or 5th is missing from a chord. Leaving this field blank will tell FrettyCharts not to bother doing this. Typical notations are to use the text "omit" or "no". FrettyCharts will add in the particular note being omitted. Note also, that in settings below you can add brackets to these entries. Don't try to add the brackets in the text for this field. You can also add "rd" and "th" that appear in 3rd and 5th, using settings below.
Alt Bass Slash	For a given chord, you can elect to name it using the alternative bass note convention. This is done by setting the naming property for that particular chord, in the chord editor. This entry lets you set how the slash will look (usually just a forward slash "/")
6,7,9,11,13	This field is not editable, but is provided to allow you to set the text to superscript for these numbers.
2,4	As above, applies to 2 and 4.
3,5	Same again, for 3 and 5.
#,b in Root Note	Not editable. You can set superscript text for these symbols.
Manual Name	This is a special case. When you don't use the automatic chord naming, and enter your own chord name into the chord editor, you can use this option to set the text to superscript mode. Note: the first character in your manually entered name will not be super-scripted in the common case where this first symbol is the root note of the chord.

Spacing Rules

Click the spacing rules button to change the way FrettyCharts places spaces between fragments of chord names. Without spacing some chord names can look a little odd, for example: Gomit5th, Gadd9. You may want to alter the spacing here to show: G omit 5th, or G add 9.

The default settings for spacing rules should suffice for most cases, however you can use this editor to customize particular instances. The editor appears as follows:

Each row in this editor represents a pair of naming items: left and right. For example: C add 9, consists of 2 separate pairs:

1) Left = Root Note (C),  Right = Add
2) Left = Add, Right = 6,7,9,11,13 (9 in this case)

In the example above we can see there is a row for pair (1) which says "No Space". For the second pair, there is no entry. This means that by default there IS a space. Any pairing that does not appear will be assumed to have a space.

Note also, that you can enter a "," for some pairs as required. If you click the "add" or "edit" buttons to change the spacing rules, the following dialog will appear:

Select the left and right items for which this spacing rule applies, then select one of: "No Space" or "," for the spacing rule.

NOTE: again, any pair that does NOT appear in the list of rules will be assumed to have a space.

Comma Separate Same Items

This option applies to chord names such as Csus2,4. If you uncheck this setting, the chord will be named as Csus2 sus4 instead. It applies to any case where the same naming item appears several times in a row.

Show "th" "nd" and "rd" for Extras

Check this setting if you want the "th" suffix added to names such as: Csus4th, Cadd11th (instead of just Csus4, Cadd11)

Note: this does not apply to 6ths and 7ths.

Put Brackets around Altered 5th

This setting forces brackets to appear around a chord name that has an altered 5th. For example: C (-5th), or C (+5th).

Put Brackets around No 3rd/5th

This setting forces brackets to appear around a chord name that has an omitted 3rd or 5th. For example: C (No 3rd), or C (No 5th)

Importing Chord Naming Rules

These naming rules will be saved with the Chord Naming setting, which are saved inside your project file.

If you design a set of chord naming and spacing rules that you want to load into a new project you can import those settings. Go to the "Project" menu and select "Import Project Settings from Project". Select the project file with the settings you wish to load. These settings (along with all other project settings) will appear in the new project that you currently have open.