Please help me with a decision

[tonedef71]

Their book "Exploring Theory" is very nice also (and with little exercises for the beginners, but the book goes quite deeply in the general things to absolutely know to begin to compose or really play seriously).

http://ars-nova.com/et/

Good stuff indeed!

[J.F.K.]

Meanwhile I found out, what this "Chord symbol" method of notating chords with roman numerals is about, i.e. what is its purpose. It is for easily transposing songs on instruments like the guitar.

With this method, the chord symbols always mean the same notes for a given root note as Attila already has stated. That means if the root note is for instance the note E, then the symbol "VI Maj" always means the same notes c#, f, g#, irrespective of whether the scale is E major, E minor, E dorian, E super locrian or whatever. Because of this behaviour, every roman numeral chord symbol like VII Maj, bVI dim, IV min, and so on always mean exactly the same guitar gripes when the guitar is transposed with a guitar capo. So, this method of chord notation can help a lot for transposing a song on the guitar.

The downside of the coin is that the information about the relation between the chord symbol and the currently played scale gets lost with this method. If you see a symbol like "bVI" you can not say immediatly if the base note of the chord belongs to the scale or not. It depends on the scale. With the traditional method of notating with roman numerals you can see immediately: bVI is out of scale. And THIS is the information we need for composing. Rapid Composer is for composing, not for playing guitar.

I hope I could clarify my point with that.

[musicdevelopments]

Thanks everyone for your input! I understand your point, so there won't be any big changes about roman numeral notation in RC. I am happy that I asked you, and I am even happier that so many great replies came.

Thanks, guys!
Attila

[themixtape]

Attila, email me if you need any other help with the Roman Numeral stuff... hopefully we made things more clear for ya.