Chord symbols break MusicXML export from Dorico 1.1

Dorico
1

tl;dr: If you’re exporting MusicXML from Dorico and it’s a mess, try removing all your chord symbols and then re-exporting - it might help!

I’m aware that exporting MusicXML from Dorico is not something the developers have had a proper chance to work on, yet, and that there are a few old-ish posts on this forum regarding the shortfalls in the current implementation. I think I’ve just discovered something that hasn’t been mentioned thus far.

Basically, when exporting MusicXML from Dorico a hidden rest is added to every place where there should be a chord symbol. I think the rest is the value of whatever the previous note was, but haven’t tested extensively enough to know definitively. If I remove all the chord symbols everything (in this simple file) transfers pretty much exactly how I’d hope it to.

I have in front of me Dorico 1.1, Sibelius 8.5.0 (my free upgrades have run out), and Finale 2011 (which I only use for opening ancient files).

I’ve attached the zipped-up Dorico project but, to be honest, it’s nothing special - it’s a native Dorico 1.1 file with everything pretty much default.

Here’s what I put into Dorico - it’s intentionally really really simple:

Here’s how Sibelius renders it. Note I’ve not touched spacing, and view Hidden Objects is actually turned on. I can’t see any way of making these bars rhythmically correct, but trust me, they don’t play like 4/4 bars!

Finale usefully shows me what Dorico’s actually done (ignore the fact there are no accidentals; that’s already been explained elsewhere and the solution is to run Canonic Utilities in Finale and clear frozen accidentals):

Could fixing this maybe be added to the to-do list, please?
chords test.dorico.zip (265 KB)

2

Thanks for reporting this, Leo. The problem is that some embyronic chord symbol export code has been left in by mistake, and it’s causing spurious forward/backup elements to be exported. Unfortunately we’re not going to have time to work on exporting chord symbols to MusicXML in the immediate future, but we can remove this embryonic code, which should resolve the problem.

3

As chord symbols don’t seem to export anyway, filtering all chord symbols and hitting delete is really no inconvenience. Thought it might just help fellow users to know that, actually, Dorico’s MusicXML export isn’t too bad.