NOTION Music Forum

Can anybody help me with Jazz Chords in Notion? I suspect what I'm trying to do is impossible but would be happy to be told otherwise. Can I write the chord "B♭13 ♭9" without it looking like "B♭♭913". Can't get brackets around the alterations either. There are plenty of other commonly used jazz chords which seem to be just plain wrong. I can't get CMaj9 - I can get CMaj79 but that is not the correct way to write it. I can't believe that a great piece of software as Notion has neglected chord symbols so badly while giving such comprehensive Tablature options. Who needs TAB? The guitar teacher's curse. What I do need to do is to write a big band guitar chart which seems impossible. Apart from the chords mentioned above, any chords with alterations end up being so wide that you can't have more that two bars per line. Also the alternate bass note should have the option of being written below the chord otherwise it's just confusing to read in a complex chart. Thanks for the great software but please tell me somebody's working on fixing up these issues. Or maybe I just missed a menu?

If you just need it for display, and not playback, add it as a text box and type it in, using the JazzText font, around 10 or 11 points (it doesn't match exactly at either setting, it seems to me). Or the JazzCord font (around 11 or 12 points, I think) if you need flats and sharps, since there's no lower case "b" in JazzText, but it doesn't match exactly how Notion enters the chords (numerals are superscripted in JazzCord, for example). In some ways it looks better for jazz than the way Notion writes Jazz chords by default (but you might need to experiment with which characters on the keyboard create what you want (for example exclamation point prints as a flat marking, some capital letters above "G" create extended chord symbols).

It's an annoying workaround, but I think it works for printing. Of course, it won't be included when you do things like Clear Special... Chord markings, and it won't be included in play back with rhythm slashes.

If you install the JazzCord font from the Notion fonts folder onto your system, you can open MS Word or similar and "insert symbol", and see exactly what special characters are available in that font, insert what you want to use into Word, and then cut and paste the symbol into an opened text box in Notion (since many of the symbols are assigned to ASCII codes that are not easily entered on a keyboard, or using the ALT+num keys method in Windows).

Oddly, the font even has "add9" as a symbol, even though you can't seem to use that chord in Notion.

Thanks for your replies. I've tried fiddling around with your work-arounds but have come to the conclusion that I'd rather spend money on a proper notation program. Note that I'm on a Mac not a PC so I'm not sure if the fonts are that easily "copied over". I've tried the text box solution and found that I have to use special characters which is awkward. Not only that but the relative sizes of the Chord name, quality and alterations are all wrong. Also the chords are not movable to the left or right from a note which makes fine-tuning the printed look of a chart impossible. I'm very annoyed with myself for thinking that Notion was a serious contender to Finale & Sibelius. I feel totally ripped off. The chords are pathetic. I can get a better result with an open source free notation program. Oh well live & learn. Thanks again.

On the Mac, the NOTION fonts are in the application package in the "Fonts" subfolder of the "Resources" folder, but the fonts most likely already are installed . . .

[NOTE: To view the contents of the package for a Mac OS X application, locate the application and then right-click on it, which causes a fly-out context menu to appear; and there will be a "Show Package Contents" menu item, which you click to select; and then the package contents appear in a Finder window. Unless you know how everything works in relation to a Mac OS X application package, one is strongly advised to avoid making any changes, but there is a lot of information in some application packages, and you can copy it and have a bit of FUN trying to make sense of it . . . ]

You can view the installed fonts on the Mac via the "Font Book" application, and for different types and styles of symbols (in general) you can use the "Character Viewer" utility, which is what I use for various copyright and trademark symbols, as well as a few musical symbols . . .

Using the "TextEdit" application is another way to see how fonts look, where TextEdit on the Mac is similar to "Notepad" in Windows . . .

THOUGHTS

Finale 2014 (MakeMusic) was just released, and for purposes of printing sheet music, it has some intriguing new functionality for chords . . .

You can work in NOTION 4 and then use MusicXML to export music notation from NOTION 4 for purposes of importing it to Finale, and vice-versa . . .

However, the audio demos for Finale 2014 were not done using a calibrated full-range studio monitor system, and when you listen to them on a calibrated full-range studio monitor system the experience is reminiscent of the noises made by a dentist's drill when the dentist is working on a tooth cavity . . .

Lots of FUN!