I have a client who has requested chord charts with the lyrics underneath. I have found it is easiest to just transcribe the vocal melody (or at least the rhythm) so that the lyrics can be more accurately placed on the chart in terms of timing.
However, getting the lyrics to show up correctly once slashes are added has proven to be a challenge. There seem to be two methods, neither of which is very good:
Covering up the melody with slash regions. This makes the lyric text jumble together and requires lots of manual adjustment to be visible (because each measure is the same width).
“Hiding” the notes and rests, then adding non-stem slashes. This keeps the text looking great, but it does not seem to be possible to 100% hide all of the notes and rests from the vocal melody. Even setting these elements to 100% opacity still leaves remnants. (Although this screen shot from Write Mode looks fine, the PDF version has little artifacts and is unusable)
If you have Dorico 5, you don’t need to hide notes using opacity, there are dedicated properties for this:
You could even do both the above ^ (hiding notes and stems), and use slash regions to show slashes automatically: just make sure you’ve enabled showing notes alongside slash regions to keep the underlying note spacing.
Thank you. I guess to manually untie all notes would be the best option, though tedious. I hope that making ties and rests able to be hidden would be a feature that would be useful for this sort of thing.
And yes, the lyrics that were offset were a graphical adjustment I had made in another attempt. Thank you for noticing this.
It’s a pretty unusual request. Is the client the vocalist too, or are these just cues? If they are just cues, there probably are more clear ways of handling it. If they really want what you’re describing, don’t use slash notation though, use a slash voice without the stem. That way the horizontal spacing won’t just be spaced as 4 quarters like it is with slash notation. Hide the notes and stems, select all and untie (U) with one click. Once your slash voice is in you can use Remove Rests on the voice with the notes.
If they are just cues, I think I’ve been asked to do all of the below options before, so some other options you might propose are:
A) Just leaving it as in your top example. The slashes aren’t really contributing anything, and if they are comping, it is assumed they will know what to do.
B) Put the notes and lyrics cue sized, along with slashes. A bit cluttered visually, but the cue is clear at least.
Thank you. This solves all the problems I was having.
For this particular instance, this is the solution. The spacing is good and looks clean. Thank you.
If they really want what you’re describing, don’t use slash notation though, use a slash voice without the stem. That way the horizontal spacing won’t just be spaced as 4 quarters like it is with slash notation. Hide the notes and stems, select all and untie (U) with one click. Once your slash voice is in you can use Remove Rests on the voice with the notes.
Your other suggestions are also quite helpful, depending on the need. Much appreciated.
