Can I copy/paste alternative chord symbols? I know how to create alternative chord symbols, but rather than type out each one, I would like to paste in a whole song’s worth of alternative chord symbols from another Dorico file. Is this possible, and if so how?
As I have not receieved any responses to my question, I assume this is not possible.
@Bertie_1 , it may be possible but I, for one, have no idea of what you are asking. (Alternative in what way?) Pasting in from another file? Do you want to import the chords used in a flow or do you want to include a style/type that you made in your defaults?
A little more info would be helpful. Screenshots and examples, please!
– Jim
It is a good question. In some types of chord symbol practice the pianist might see G7sus4 and the guitarist may prefer G11.
Okay, I see your point — but I still don’t know what the OP is asking!
Surely those are different chords (G11= G, B, D, F, A, C . G7sus4 = G,C,D,F)?
Guitarists typically play fingered chords with only 3 to 4 notes, more if using open strings. I learned this the hard way by writing a chord for a guitarist that had an impossible fingering.
Another example is a book by pianist Dick Hyman. (I think the title was 100 songs every musician should know, or to that effect). In it were chord symbols, the ones black where “standard”, then in red ink he included “alternate” changes, usually ones he considered to be “hipper”.
Personally, I preferred the sus4. But that was playing in the 70s & 80s for church stuff. Later, I had to deal with something like F/G for a G11. But @Janus has a point — while they may end up “fingered” the same by a guitarist, they function differently and often resolve differently. Still, it may be easier for a rhythm player to have a single way to denote a variety of uses! (We often use enharmonic spellings of notes despite the offenses to theory, voice leading, or “proper” spelling.)
What I mean is, for example, I have written out the basic chords for ‘Summertime’. However, I would like an alternative version of the chords to show in the same score with all the jazzy extensions and substitute chords. I already have another score with the jazzy extensions and can I type out each chord and use the arrow keys to put these alternative chords on a separate line. But it would be preferable and much quicker if I could simply copy/paste all the chords from the jazzy extension score to the basic score in one go. I don’t know how to do this and suspect it can’t be done.
Edit - Deleted.
Indeed, it cannot currently be done. There’s no way to specify that a chord symbol should be pasted into another line than its source line at present.