I have created a document. It is one song/score with multiple sections, i.e; Intro, Verse, Chorus, etc. I have created a flow for each part as it allows me to quickly name each section using predetermined fonts, move the parts around and the system spacing is retained. However, when I activate display “chord diagrams at the top of the score” from the Layout > Chord Diagram menu, it displays the chords above each flow instead which is unhelpful, confusing, and frankly, a visual mess. I have searched high and low for a solution to this. I have attached two files; ONE: before and TWO: after. To summarise, I would only like the used chords displayed at the very top of the first page only, not above each flow.
Do all the flows (already) use the same chords present in the first flow, or would the chords on the first page have to represent a composite of chords from all the flows?
Flow 1: G5 and Em7
Flow 2: C, D, G/B, Em and B7/D#, D/A (plus G5 and Em7) already used in flow 1
Flow 3: No additional chords.
So, NO, the first flow only contains two of the eight chords.
I wish to have ALL of the chords for the ENTIRE song at the top of page 1 and not the chords for each flow at the top of each flow which you can see is what happened in my file “TWO”.
Then you may want to make a graphic of the chord diagrams (in a separate file) and import it into a custom Page Template in your first flow and not use the automatic routine that puts chord diagrams at the start of each flow.
Thanks for your input Derrek. That sounds like a mighty complex solution to what should be a simple procedure. I’m not sure how I would even generate the chords to create a graphic file. It only took me 30 mins to create the score. This simple process would be far more time consuming than creating the score by the sound of it.
Open a new (guitar) file and add the chords you need to a staff in the temp file in order to create the opening display of chords you want.
Use a graphic slice to grab the display Dorico generates (SVG is probably the best format).
Create a custom Page Template mimicking the First Page but with a graphic field into which you can import your generated slice containing all the chord diagrams you need for the entire multi-flow composition.
Asking Dorico to add a feature to put all the chord diagrams from an entire multi-flow document on the first page alone is a perfectly reasonable request; but if you want the capability now, this is how Dorico can do it.
I have created a graphic slice and exported. I’m now back in my original file. I’ve created a graphic frame. How do I import it. Drag and drop doesn’t work.
This type of score is probably more simple to do as a single flow. You could use codas for the each verse and chorus. (And there would be no problem with your chord diagrams).
Yes, I’m afraid Dorico’s really not set up to handle this kind of situation where multiple flows are used to represent a single song so that it would need to collect up chord diagrams from several flows to show them at the start of only the first one.
You’re really fighting against the way we envisioned the software should work, and although in an ideal world it would be possible for us to accommodate every possible use case, that’s not practical. So I really would recommend combining your separate flows into a single one, and then everything should work much more smoothly.
