Exploring the Chord Symbols Widgets

MidiStickers provides multiple chord analysis tools, which can be combined and used simutaneously. These widgets cover most mainstream tonal harmony theories. Here is an overview of the available tools:

• Modern Chord Symbols as used in pop/jazz
• Roman Numerals for chord degree anlysis
• German Function Theory symbols
• Historical Figured Bass, for early-music and partimento

Alongside those widgets, you will also find some other visual analysis tools:

• Chord Circle: displays scales degrees for the chords currently played in a circle view
• Chord Progression: displays last played chords in a grid.

Note

Chord widgets provides terminology and style variants to best match your learning and teaching needs. Those variantes cover styles found in common textbooks and can be set from the Widget Settings window.

Chord Symbols

The Chord Symbols widget displays the currently played chords, with extensive customization possibilities.

Note

Question: Why isn’t my [“insert note combination”] chord beign recognized?
Answer: With MidiStickers, we have chosen not to clutter the chord recognition system with artificial chord-naming. While it may be tempting to assign a name to every possible pitch combination, that is rarely a sound pedagogical strategy. We do plan, however, to offer more advanced contextual pitch-analysis in the future, like as a seperate widget.

Note that you can also use the Hold Last Chord option in the widget settings. This option was designed so you can display the last chord detected, avoiding having chords disappear when none is currently detected.

Roman Numerals

The Roman Numerals widget provides Roman numeral analysis using the most common conventions found in harmony textbooks. In the Widget Settings you can explore a number of naming convention alternatives, including simpler versions omitting inversions.

Roman Numerals follow the global key set using the Key Selector Widget or directly from a Staff object (using the mouse-wheel while hovering the staff).

Composite Widgets: Staff + Chords + Roman Numerals

From the Staff menu, you can create some ready-made composite widgets, such as the usual combination of a Roman Numeral linked to a Staff widget.

Figured Bass

The Figured Bass widget displays intervals from the bass, following the usual interval abbreviations (ie, 6 instead of 6/3). You can also turn abbreviations off from the Widget Settings.

Function Symbols

This widget covers modern German Function theory from the works of Hugo Riemann disciples such as Willhem Mahle and Diether de La Motte.

There are numerous variants of Function Theory symbols. MidiStickers covers modern German theory as well as some variants, such as Brazilian therminology (based on the revised works of Hans-Joachim Koelreutter). A simplified version is also available, indicating only the main function of each chord using the T (tonic), S (subdominant) and D (dominant) letters.

Tip

You can set any widget to be transparent by holding the Control key and right-clicking the widget, then selecting Set Transparent from the context menu. Transparency is useful to visually integrate your chord symbols with other widgets.