Re: chordmode :13 leaving out 11

[Brett Duncan]

Rune Zelder wrote:
> Manual says "thirds are added to the root until it reaches the specified 
> number" which would be the correct thing to do.
> But when specifying :13, the 11 is left out, so that the chord name printed is "9/add13" instead of "13" 

And that's not all - if you enter ":13.11" to include the 11th in the 
chord, the chord name appears as "13", which as Han-Wen stated normally 
implies the omission of the 11th.

Rick Hansen (aka RickH) wrote:
> The 11th (or 4th) if stated, always implies a suspended chord where the 3rd
> (10th) is omitted.  A 13 alone also rules that the 7th is flatted, same with
> 9 or 7 making the chord a dom7.  9/add13 is confusing and non-standard, it
> should be just 13 as any player would know to flat the 7th and optionally
> add the 9th (or not) and also know not to play the 11th.  If I see 9/add13 I
> would be likely to think it was an "add chord" and not a dom7 chord, so I
> would play only the 9th and 13th and omit the 7th (because of the word
> "add") and of course not play the 11th, above the triad.

While I don't agree that including the 4th *always* implies a suspended 
chord, it true enough to say it is a fairly common convention, but if 
you enter "c:4" into LP, what you get is a chord consisting of root, 3rd 
and 4th, but no 5th, which seems a bit pointless.  Enter "c:2" and you 
get just the root and 2nd, which is even less useful. It would make more 
sense if an entry like "c:4" produced either the basic triad with an 
added 4th, or a suspended 4th. (Same idea with the 2nd.)

(I made a blog entry 
(http://chordata.blogspot.com/2005/04/muddy-spot-in-lilypond.html) some 
time back that mentions these and a few other issues with chords.)

It would be nice to see some of the inconsistencies between input of 
chords and printed output tidied up.