When creating a new library, you can select the Populate Automatically option, when choosing how to fill the library with chordshapes.
Populating is similar to searching, a important function in Design View for finding new chordshapes, but it works for all chords at once, and is only available when creating a new library.
It is a very powerful function which systematically scans the entire fretboard for any instrument and tuning, and finds every possible chordshape which suits the library's searching settings and has matching chords of any of the library's chord types.
These chordshapes are then evaluated according to the Populate Preferences you have chosen, and the best chordshapes are chosen to be added to the new library. You can control how many chordshapes are added with the Populate Target option.
The populate target and preferences can be adjusted in the New Library window, at the start of the new library process, and are explained in detail below:
Populate Target
This is the number of alternative chordshapes you want to have in the library for each chord. Beginners will probably want just a couple chordshapes for each chord, while more advanced players may be interested in having many different choices. In either case, ChordWizard will select the best chordshapes for each chord, up to your target number.
In some situations, the number of chordshapes you end up may vary from the target number.
Depending on the instrument, tuning, indexing and searching options you have chosen for the library, there may not be enough chordshapes possible for some chords to reach the target number.
Any subsequent attempts at searching will not find any more chordshapes, because the two processes work in the same way. If you want to find other chordshapes for some chords, you will need to relax some of the restrictions in the searching or indexing areas of Library Options.
You may also end up with more chordshapes than the target number for some chords. This is because, depending on your indexing settings, you may have more than one matching chord for some chordshapes.
A chordshape could rank highly for one of these chords, and so be added to the new library, even if it did not rank in the target number for the other matching chords. It then would still appear for the other chords as a result of being included on the basis of the high ranking matching chord.
Populate Preferences
While the Library Options of the new library will determine which chordshapes are even considered for evaluation, the Populate Preferences controls how ChordWizard chooses between the possible chordshapes in selecting the best of them.
There are four parameters you can use to control how chordshapes are evaluated. Any of them can be specified with an importance of None, Low or High.
Each of these parameters is balanced against the others so, for example, setting all of them to High is not the best strategy. It is better to work out which areas are genuinely less important to you and indicate this, so that the process has more flexibility for evaluating chordshapes.
Easier to Play - A higher importance indicates that you prefer chordshapes of lower physical difficulty. This includes such factors as less fingers required, a lower fret span along the fretboard, and less string bridging.
Less Mute Strings - A higher importance indicates that you prefer chordshapes to have open or played strings, rather than mute strings. It will also prefer mute strings to be located together or on outer strings, where they occur.
Lower Fret Position - A higher importance indicates that you prefer chordshapes to be located on the lower frets of the fretboard (closer to the head of the instrument) rather than the higher frets (closer to the body).
Standard Inversion - A higher importance indicates that you prefer the notes in the chordshape to appear in standard inversion for all matching chords. In general, this is recommended in order to arrive at chordshapes which sound as close as possible to the chord for which they are being used.
See Also
