[Dixielandjazz] What I called "European Chord Symbols"

[Craig I. Johnson]

Thanks for the notes from Jim "K", Dick Sleeman, Gary Kizer, Andy Ling and Bruce Stangeland
on this subject.
Dick,
I stand corrected. I was told that the book(s) in ("Anthologie des Grilles de Jazz" and its
companion with melodies written out are widely used in Europe. 
I did not not realize that this was somewhat unique to the author Pillipe Boudoin, so I referred to it
as a "European" convention
Sorry.
Moreover I thank you for your very clear paragraph on how this relates to chord "inversions".
and  Gary Kizer's initial off- list response which cleared me up on this convention, and the fact
he pointed out a pair of scanned in chord sheets on his site for clarification..

Jim 
The previous response from Andy Ling was indeed correct. I have the same book with the
introduction in "English" believe it or not. Somehow, if it is there, I had missed the
part about the numbers for the bass note of the chord (or what the bass instr should play.
This is what Gary Kizer cleared up for me. I never noticed it in the chord book, but when I 
saw those symbols in the companion melody book, it
confused me seeing something like:      7M
                                                       C
                                                     3

instead of: CMaj7/E
Further:
E.g. '3' means put the 3rd note in the mentioned chord as the bottom note in the chord.
'4' means, even if the note is not in the chord, add what would be the 4th degree as the bottom
note where I would write C7/F as the chord - he would write "roughly" 4 C7.

I totally understood the "structure" of the tabular version and like it. I wish I could 
extend my music program to create such tables for the banjo player.
(Most songs could fit in a pocket of 3x5 cards for him.)


Bruce,
Sibelius is somewhat the same as Finale in its notation. However, as I said my issue
is to be able to print out chord only "sheets" which would require an extension to either program
to scan the chords and output them in the 'spreadsheet like" format of the Boudoin chord book.
I may do some research to see if I can write something that will do that. I believe I could do it
more easily for FInal than Sibelius as Finale has a more powerful language for writing
personal "add-ons" -- but no guarantee that I will succeed..

Regards to all,

Craig