I’m used to chord symbols staying in effect until the chord changes, not appearing in every measure. I have a simple blues arrangement imported from Finale and repeated chord symbols show in every measure (4 measures of C7, 2 measures of F7, etc) . I looked through the Engraving and Layout Options and can’t find any way to globally suppress repeated chord symbols. Other than just deleting them, is there a way to suppress repeated chord symbols?
You can hide them in case you need them later… 
True. I could also adjust the Chord Symbol regions to only show the first instance of a chord, but that’s kinda of “brute force”. Was hoping for a simpler option.
I’d actually just delete them, to be brutally honest.. 
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To provide some more context, here’s a short excerpt from “Berkeley Contemporary Music Notation” by Jonathan Feist. In the Introduction, he acknowledges that there differences of opinion about what constitutes “correct” notation, but he advocates for clarity, consistency and ergonomics. I offer the following for what I would hope could be a “check box” option under “Layout Options/Chord Symbols and Diagrams”.
Berklee Music Notation on Chord Notation.pdf (525.2 KB)
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If I take a Finale file with chord changes every 2 bars, export XML, then import into Dorico, they don’t show on every bar. They only show where they appear in Finale. If you’ve hidden them in Finale with a Staff Style or something, then this is just an XML import issue, not a Dorico issue. Obviously if you only want chords at the first occurrence and not every bar, simply don’t input them when you are writing into a native Dorico file. If you want to zip up the Finale file, I’ll be happy to look at it, export XML, then Import into Dorico to see if I get different results.
I have this book too, and his “good” example is commonly found, but even “better” would be to use a 1-bar repeat to avoid the dreaded “wall of slashes” look.
Ken Williams
Thad Jones (Kendor)
Slide Hampton
etc., etc. Less visual clutter to process on the page and the duration is instantly recognizable.
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I also agree that “less ink on the page” is better. What had me confused is that arrangements directly in Dorico did not have this “repeated chord” behavior, so your comments got me thinking…
In Setup, I added a Treble Staff and had Dorico “Generate Notes from Chord Symbols in Selection”. Then I deleted all the chord symbols, selected all notes in the Treble Staff and had Dorico “Generate Chord Symbols from Selection”.
Voila… problem solved. I did have to go to several rehearsal marks and highlight notes in the Treble clef for that measure to generate “courtesy” chord symbols, but that’s easy.
It seems the repeated chords are probably an artifact of XML import from Finale. But now I know how to get around the problem. You’re obviously much more experienced with Dorico than I am; thanks for helping, .
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