Missing accidentals on borrowed chords

Sorry for writing so many bug reports in quick succession, but I will just forget about it if I don’t report it now. I noticed that most of the roman numerals for borrowed chords are lacking accidentals for the chord extensions. Here are some examples:

  • Dominant seventh chords on the Ionian (red) scale degree are only correctly diplayed in Major and Mixolydian. In all other diatonic modes these chords are missing the flat in front of the 7:

  • In the case of add♭6 and add♭9 chords, these are also missing flats in front of both notes:

  • Dominant seventh chords on the Lydian (green) scale degree are only correctly diplayed in Lydian and Major and all of them are lacking a flat in front of the 11 (for both add11 and full 11th chords):

  • Again, in the case of add♭6 and add♭9 chords, these are also missing flats in front of both notes:

  • Major seventh chords on the Mixolydian (blue) scale degree are only correctly displayed in Major. In all other diatonic modes these chords are missing the sharp in front of the 7 and in the case of add♯11 chords, they’re also lacking the sharp in front of the 11:

  • Minor seventh chords in place of minor major seventh chords are missing the flat in front of the 7:

These are just a few examples – there are many more of these instances. Just let me know if you would like me to provide you with an exhaustive list.

I honestly don’t think displaying chord extensions relative to the project key is a good solution. The entire system would be so much more coherent if the chord extensions on the roman numerals were analogous to the ones on the absolute chord labels. The biggest issue with the current approach is that, on non-diatonic scale degrees, you inevitably end up with the same roman numeral for multiple different chords, because there’s no diatonic chord to compare them to. I mean just look at this:

How can two different chords have the exact same roman numeral? You could theoretically label these chords based on whether the seventh itself is diatonic to the project key - so in C Major the B♭7 would be ♭VII♭7 and the B♭maj7 would just be ♭VII7, whereas in C Phrygian Dominant the B♭7 would be ♭VII7 and the B♭maj7 would be ♭VII♯7 - but I’m not sure if that wouldn’t just make this whole system even more confusing.

Even if you decide to stick to the current approach for 9ths and above, maybe at least consider to adjust the labeling for 7ths. For example, the triangle character is a very common way to indicate a major seventh interval. So minor seventh chords could be x7, minor major seventh chords could be x△7, dominant seventh chords could be X7 and major seventh chords could be X△7. That way there would’nt be any need to mock about with sharps and flats anymore (at least for seventh chords).

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By the way - there’s also the reverse case where there are accidentals on chord tones that shouldn’t have any:

Thank you very much for bringing this up. I saved it to our bug list.

Dennis

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