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Harmony lanes

battuta has two annotation lanes over the same music, independent of each other:

  • chord symbols above the staff — Cmaj7, Am7, D7/F#
  • Roman numeral analysis below the staff — I, vi, V65/V

Both are real MEI <harm> control events anchored to the note you attached them to, so they render in both views, travel with copy and paste, and undo like anything else.

Chord symbols above the staff: Cmaj7, Am7, D7 slash F sharp, G13
The chord-symbol lane sits above the staff.
Roman numeral analysis below the staff: I, vi, V65 of V, V7
The Roman-numeral lane sits below it.

Typing a symbol

Section titled “Typing a symbol”
  1. Put the caret on the note the symbol belongs to.
  2. Open the harmony select in the status bar and pick the lane.
  3. Type. A small editor floats at the caret showing what you have so far, green while the text is a complete symbol, red while it isn’t yet.
  4. Press Enter — the symbol is committed and the caret advances to the next event, ready for the next one.
Key In the harmony lane
Tab Autocomplete from the suggestions shown beside the buffer
Enter Commit and advance to the next event
← / → Commit and move
Backspace Delete a character
esc Commit and leave the lane

Landing on an event that already has a symbol loads it for correction. Committing an empty buffer deletes the symbol. Every commit is one undo step.

The grammar is closed

Section titled “The grammar is closed”

The lane only accepts characters that can extend a valid symbol. That sounds restrictive; in practice it means you cannot produce an annotation that is half-typed nonsense, and the analysis stays machine-readable.

Chord symbols — a root A–G with optional b/#, a quality, extensions and alterations, and an optional slash bass:

C   Cm   C7   Cmaj7   Cm7   C6   Cm6   C9   Cmaj9   C11   C13
Cdim   Cdim7   Cm7b5   Cø7   C°7   Caug   C+   Csus4   Csus2
Cadd9   C7b9   C7#9   C7b5   C7#5   C7alt   C-7   CΔ7   D7/F#

Roman numerals — upper or lower case numerals, °/ø/+ qualities, figured-bass inversions, secondary dominants with a slash, accidental prefixes, and the borrowed chords:

I   i   ii   ii7   iii   III+   IV   iv   V   V7   V65   V43   V42
vi   vii°   vii°7   viiø7   I6   I64   bII   bIII   bVI
N6   It+6   Fr+6   Ger+6   V65/V   vii°7/ii

Incomplete text is not silently accepted — if you leave the lane with a buffer that isn’t a valid symbol, battuta tells you and keeps the buffer so you can finish it.