Chord symbols & guitar diagrams

Video narrated by Daniel Spreadbury, Senior Product Manager for Sibelius.

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Chord symbols and guitar chord diagrams can now be created quicker than ever from your computer keyboard, MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar. They also feature many enhancements and extra notations, including guitar scale diagrams.

Inputting

To create a chord, just type it on your computer keyboard, or play it on your MIDI instrument. Chords can appear as a chord symbol, a guitar diagram (in a choice of voicings), or both together – they’re all now treated as the same kind of object.

When typing chords in, there’s no need to use special characters – Sibelius 6 automatically converts them for you. For example, if you type ‘Cmaj7’, Sibelius will display it as Cma7, CM7, or any other convention you like. You can even rewrite chord symbols in different ways, such as turn into the equivalent .

Customize what to type or play on your MIDI keyboard/guitar to get this chord

Library

Sibelius’s built-in chord library is easier than ever, including over 600 chord types. It produces suitable guitar voicings for any chord, plus you can design your own diagrams, which are added to the library for future use. You can even send your customized library to other people.

Guitar scale diagrams

Sibelius now lets you create these special diagrams which show how to play a scale, lick or riff. Hundreds of diagrams are included for 25 different scales. But you can also add your own ones to the library using white or black circles, squares or diamonds as dots, with optional text inside (for fingerings or note names). You can also number frets, and add letters to the strings.

Advanced options

As usual, there are many subtle options for more advanced users. As well as a huge choice of conventions for writing chord extensions, you can use different ones for root notes - English, German, Scandinavian or Solfege. Draw guitar diagrams and scales vertically or horizontally, and change any diagram’s size. Even normal diagrams can use special dot shapes, with optional text inside.

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