User manual

843
Working with chords
Inserting chord symbols
5. On the Scores menu, select “Make Chord Symbols”.
The chords appear. They can be moved, duplicated and deleted as any other
symbol. You can also double-click on a chord symbol to edit it in the Edit Chord
Symbol dialog (in the same way as when creating chords manually – see above).
A staff after using Make Chord Symbols.
• Instead of using the “Make Chord Symbols” menu item, you can click the “Make
Chord Symbols” button on the extended toolbar.
• If the “Use for Make Chord Symbols” option is activated on the Project–Guitar
Library subpage of the Score Settings dialog (see
“Adding guitar chord symbols”
on page 821), guitar chord symbols are added as well (if the guitar library contains
any guitar symbols that match the chords).
About the analysis
The MIDI chords are expected to be played in their most basic inversion. If not, an
extra bass note is added. For example, the notes CEG are interpreted as C major, but
GCE is interpreted as C major with a G bass note. If you do not want any
interpretation of the inversion (i.
e. no added bass notes) hold down [Ctrl]/[Command]
while selecting Make Chord Symbols.
All selected notes on all staves are taken into consideration. Whenever there is any
change on any staff, the notes are reinterpreted and a new chord symbol is added.
This means you should probably avoid having the melody track in the Score Editor
when you use Make Chord Symbols, or you get a lot more chords than you expect,
possibly with strange tensions.
In addition to the above, the Quantize value is used. At the most, there is a new chord
at each quantize position.
There must be at least three notes at a certain position for the program to interpret it
as a chord. Also some combinations of notes simply do not make any sense to the
program and do not produce any chords.
The analysis method is not perfect since the same set of notes can be interpreted
differently depending on context. Some editing may be required. If you record the
track solely to create chords automatically, play the chord as simple as possible, in the
correct inversion, without added octaves, etc.
The Current Chord Display
Cubase features a handy chord recognition function that helps you identify chords in
the Score Editor note display. To find out which chord is formed by simultaneously
played notes, place the project cursor over the notes. All notes currently “touched” by
the project cursor are analyzed and the Current Chord Display in the status line shows
you which chord the notes form.