An artist sent me a video of her playing the song she wants charted. She’s capo 4 on her guitar, so a simple song with G, C and D chords is now actually sounding as B, E and F#. I don’t know if it matters but these tunes are for the Unitarian Church.
How do you handle it? Just chart it in the key of B? This doesn’t help guitar players who would have an easier time with a chart which says ‘capo 4’ and then shows the shapes which are being played.
Also I want to give an indication of the fingerpicking pattern in the intro and then say ‘guitar continues sim’ when the vocals start. Obviously this would be weird if I give the part in the key of B!
Yes, the chart should sound like B major when played. I neglected to mention that this is a lead sheet. The chart needs to be one stave only wherever possible as opposed to multiple staves, like a Real Book chart. I like the capo’d chords in italics that you showed, maybe I can see how much space that takes up. Generally I like lead sheets to be two pages maximum. That’s what I appreciate when on a gig.
Yep, that’s a really decent looking solution. One question - did you get the second line of chords in italics by somehow using the chord tool (popover) or are those actually text elements?
You can choose how you want a Player’s chords displayed and you can choose how the capo is set for an Instrument. Everything will happen automatically then.
To do the above:
Set your Layout to Transposing via Layout Options > Players > Transposing Layout
Set your capo position in the guitar Instrument, as well as how you want it to sound
Wow Daniel. Thanks so much for taking the time to create this detailed response. This is something that could be very useful even if the second set of chords isn’t a capo’d instrument, I can think of a few charts where I used text blocks to create alternate changes, but this is so much better.
I had no idea Dorico was capable of this.
I will have a look at all of it when I start work again tomorrow
