Improving enharmonic spelling for MIDI chord input

Your idea

Compared to Sibelius, MuseScore’s enharmonic spelling during MIDI chord input is currently unreliable.

One of the main advantages of MIDI input is the ability to enter full chords quickly (and potentially later explode them across staves). When a large number of notes must then be manually respelled, this workflow advantage is largely lost.

I am a long-time Sibelius user (since version 1) and a recent MuseScore user. I am overall very satisfied with MuseScore. I have recently completed a full big band chart (full score and parts), and this issue stands out as my main remaining pain point.

I believe this can be improved with a more musically informed algorithm, and I would be willing to contribute on the design and musical logic side if someone is interested in collaborating on the implementation.

EDIT: as a proof of concept, I developed a plugin improving enharmonic spelling for chords.

Problem to be solved

Below is a simple test case:

3 chord types:

• major 6
• major 7
• major 7 sus2

Tested across all 12 roots in a D major key signature.

These chord types were deliberately chosen because they are not enharmonically ambiguous (unlike diminished seventh chords, for example) and are normally spelled in only one conventional way.

Sibelius spells all 36 chords correctly.

MuseScore spells only 22 out of 36 chords correctly (red are incorrect).

After “Optimize enharmonic spelling”, the result is even worse: only 21 out of 36 chords are correct.

Prior art

No response

Additional context

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Checklist

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