Chord Symbols

Chord symbols belong to one document-wide chord progression. They are anchored to rhythmic positions in the music, but they are not owned by the note or rest you select to enter them. Every displayed copy refers to the same progression; there are no separate instrument-specific progressions.

Enter a chord symbol

1. Select the note or rest where the chord change begins.
2. Press Shift+K, or choose Chord symbol in Palettes → Text.
3. Enter a symbol such as C, Dm7, F#maj7/A#, Gsus4, or C5.
4. Press Enter to commit and exit, or use a navigation key to continue the progression.

The selected event establishes the rhythmic position. Adding a symbol sets that instrument's chord visibility to Show, even if it was previously Hide. This shows the entire progression above its first displayed staff, not just the new symbol. Entering another chord at the same position replaces the existing symbol rather than creating a duplicate.

Enter roots and slash bass notes as written for the instrument in the current view. In a transposed view, Viritura converts both to concert pitch for storage and playback, then displays the appropriate spelling for each instrument.

Shorthand

Chord entry accepts:

• roots from A through G;
• flat, sharp, double-flat, and double-sharp roots and bass notes;
• major, minor, dominant, diminished, augmented, half-diminished, minor-major, power, suspended-second, and suspended-fourth qualities;
• extensions 6, 7, 9, 11, and 13;
• added degrees 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 13 with add;
• omitted degrees 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, and 13 with no or omit;
• slash bass notes such as C/E or F#maj7/A#.

Cadd6 means C6, and Csus47 means C7sus4. Added degrees do not imply intervening extensions: Cadd9 has no seventh, and Cadd13 adds only the thirteenth to the triad. An added seventh is always a minor seventh, even with a major or diminished base quality. Cmaj7add9 retains its major seventh.

Combine modifiers as Cadd79omit5/E: add the seventh and ninth, omit the fifth, and use E in the bass. Concatenated 79 means 7,9; 11 and 13 remain whole degrees, so Cadd791113 adds four degrees. Balanced, nonnested parentheses and commas may group modifier or degree lists: C(add7, 9, no5), Cadd(7,9)omit5, and C7(add9,omit5) are supported. Plain-text labels normalize these spellings, for example to Cadd7add9omit5/E, while the document preserves the exact authored text.

Bare extension lists (C79, C7(9)), altered degrees (C7b9, Cadd#11), unknown degrees, and malformed or nested groups are unsupported. They retain their text and show the unsupported-symbol diagnostic described below.

Authored text is retained, including unfamiliar suffixes and unrecognized symbols. Unsupported text is not silently interpreted as a major chord. Use Properties to inspect or correct it. Enter NC or N.C. for an intentional no-chord change.

Enter a progression

Use these keys while the chord-symbol field is open:

Key	Action
Enter	Commit and exit
Space	Commit and move to the next note or rest
Shift+Space	Commit and move to the previous note or rest
;	Commit and move to the next beat
Shift+; / :	Commit and move to the previous beat
Ctrl+→	Commit and move to the first event in the next bar
Ctrl+←	Commit and move to the first event in the prior bar
Esc	Cancel and exit

Beat stepping follows the active meter. In compound meter, for example, it moves by the compound beat rather than by each notated beat unit. Navigation continues across barlines and can land in measures represented by a full-measure rest.

Edit a chord symbol

Select an engraved chord symbol to edit it in Properties. The available fields include:

• authored chord text;
• root and accidental, when recognized;
• quality and custom quality text;
• extension;
• slash bass and accidental;
• chord visibility for the instrument;
• a display override for exceptional text.

The root, quality, extension, and bass describe the harmony. A display override changes the label, not that harmony: it must describe the same chord to remain playable. Unrecognized or contradictory overrides are retained but marked unsupported, rather than played as a different chord.

Press Delete or Backspace with a chord symbol selected to remove that harmony event without changing the underlying note or rest.

Placement in scores and parts

Use the instrument's Chord Symbols control in Setup, or chord visibility in Properties:

• Automatic (Auto in Properties): show the progression above the first displayed staff of the topmost displayed instrument.
• Show: show the progression above this instrument's first displayed staff.
• Hide: suppress it for this instrument.

This is an instrument setting, stored on its source part. It follows that instrument wherever it appears, including the full score and instrumental parts; it is not an independent layout or per-symbol staff setting. Hiding the topmost instrument's symbols does not move automatic placement to the next instrument. Visibility affects engraving, not playback.

Import, paste, and export

MusicXML, MuseScore clipboard, and Finale import consolidate harmony into the same document-wide progression. At an identical rhythmic position, matching harmony is deduplicated. If incoming staves disagree, the topmost incoming source wins and a warning reports the conflict; no separate local progression is retained.

Pasting replaces existing symbols only at positions occupied by incoming chord changes. Other changes remain intact, and existing destination harmony does not compete with incoming staves for priority. Positions are compared exactly, so nearby but different changes are not merged. Pasting sets affected instruments to Show, including instruments previously set to Hide, for the entire progression.

MNX saves preserve the shared progression and authored text. PDF and SVG export use the selected score or instrumental part's visibility and concert/written pitch settings, including both roots and slash bass notes. Editor warning marks are not printed or exported.

Clipboard conversion preserves supported harmony, including added and omitted degrees, using MuseScore's concert-pitch clipboard format; MuseScore applies the destination instrument's written transposition. Unsupported harmony is preserved with a warning when possible. If that format would change its meaning, conversion reports an error rather than silently substituting a playable chord.

Unsupported symbols and playback

Unsupported symbols keep their authored text and show a red editor-only warning: Unsupported chord: cannot play this symbol. The warning also appears in Properties. These symbols produce no audio, but still end the preceding chord. NC and N.C. likewise end the preceding chord and remain silent, without an unsupported warning.

When the document contains chord symbols, the mixer includes a Chords channel. It starts unmuted and uses a piano sound in both browser and desktop playback; it does not add a notated instrument to the document. The voicing uses one low root or slash bass and all the chord tones in a fixed upper register. The root remains among the upper chord tones unless explicitly omitted with no1 or omit1; this does not remove the low bass note. An unrelated slash bass is not added to the upper chord tones.

Click a supported symbol or commit a chord edit to hear a short audition while playback is stopped. Audition uses the same voicing and respects the Chords channel's mute, solo, and level.

Ordinary full-score or instrumental-part playback includes the progression, even when its symbols are hidden. An explicit instrument selection includes chords only when it covers every instrument visible in the current view; a partial selection excludes them. In a single-instrument view, selecting that instrument therefore includes chords. An explicitly empty selection plays nothing. See Playback, Mixer & Piano Roll.

House style

Open Engrave → House Style → Chord Symbols to choose a document-wide preset:

• Conventional;
• Jazz symbols;
• Plain text;
• Lowercase minor roots.

Open Advanced to control root-letter case, major-seventh, minor, diminished, half-diminished, and augmented spellings, plus superscript or baseline extensions. These settings change engraving without rewriting the semantic chord data.

For entering pitched notes together as one rhythmic event, see Note Entry — Chords. For general selection and Properties behavior, see Notation & Editing. For layout-wide appearance controls, see Engraving & Layout.