Chord Symbols in all staves, or none?

Dorico
#1

Sorry if this is covered somewhere else, but I’ve tried searching for an answer.
Forgive me if I’m not understanding this, but what is the deal with displaying chord symbols?

In one section of my score and parts, I want chord symbols in only one instrument. In another section, I want 3 instruments to have them. The only options I see are all or none.

See the pic:

in m.4 I only want the Gtr 2 to display the chord
in m.5, I only want the organ to display that chord, while Gtr 2 plays a different chord

Right now, every instrument is doing the same thing

Am I missing something? Please steer me in the right direction.

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#2

Hi Timothy.
I don’t think it is possible yet to ask Dorico to display two different chords at the same musical place on two different instruments. You’ll need to fake it with text…

#3

I actually was able to achieve by filtering out the chord symbols.

#4

I’m not getting this. Maybe I’m used to Sibelius, but…

What am I supposed to do if I have a big band chart, and I only want chord symbols on 3 staves? Do I have to manually hide the other staves every time I add chords?

#5

No. Setup mode, right click on the player, select chord symbols, “Hide all.”

You can set chord symbols to globally hide or show for each instrument.

#6

Sorry to be a pest, but it seems very odd that I’m not able to just add a chord symbol wherever I want without having hide or show in other staves.

For instance, in Setup, I just hid the chord symbols in Trumpet 1 because I don’t want to see them in one section where the piano and bass have chord symbols, but there is going to be 8 bars later in the arrangement where the trumpet will need solo chord changes. How on earth does this work?

My apologies, but I’ve spent the last 2 hours trying to figure this out.

#7

For this usecase you have to:
Show Chord Symbols in Instrument Trumpet 1 (Setup mode, right click on the player, select chord symbols -> “Show *”) , then manually hide those you don’t want to be shown in Engrave Mode. Unfortumately “Select More” doesn’t work (for me) as far as Chord Symbals are concerned.
This might look like a weird complicated way to achieve that, but I think it’s the only way (for now?).
Reason is, that Chord Symbols are System-Objects (as difference to Program “B”) - they don’t exist in an Instrument/Stave/Player, but globally.

This has it’s downsides, but also many upsides to it.

#8

Thanks.

#9

This is one area where Dorico seems obtuse to me. I just want to write chords where I want them. If I want the same chords on another stave I can copy/paste.

#10

Yes, exactly.

#11

On the other hand the benefit of this implementation is, that you don’t have to copy and paste - and more important, that the chords keep updating throughout the parts when you edit/change one.
You have to get used to it (when coming from Program B or C…), but it makes perfectly sense to me.

#12

I find it such a pita that for some work (commercial) I use shift-X text. These are charts where, when I write a figure that needs to be played as is, I don’t want a chord symbol suggesting that my dots are optional. There are often lots of these in different parts, in different places.

There is so much that is great about Dorico’s implementation, like being able to change the appearance of a chord globally. Just this weird system of entry. Why don’t we have an ‘articulation track’ where you need to hide all articulations on any stave that you don’t want them?

#13

Definitely. I think it’s a great system, but could be a little more flexible. Also, I just need to get used to it. :slight_smile:

#14

It is definitely awkward dealing with cases where you want to display chords only during a solo section, or where you want to spell the chords different ways for different players. However, the implementation as a whole is a HUGE time saver. I fly through chord entry now because Dorico allows you to type the chord spellings in any sensible shorthand and makes good sense of just about everything, then displays the chords very cleanly.

#15

I’ve asked for this before. As have others. A lot… I believe. Dorico seemed to solve a work-flow issue (making sure chords get copied correctly between rhythm section parts and are dynamically updated as you go), but in doing so has stifled flexibility.

I can get behind Dorico’s method of treating chords as system objects if it would allow me to toggle instruments to have their own independent chord lines when I need it. Having the ability to select 8 bars (for a trumpet solo for example) and temporarily “turning the chords on” just for those bars would be helpful too. And I also REALLY think that there should be an option that makes chords NOT appear on empty bars by default.

#16

Daniel has already dealt with this issue in this post
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=246&t=127484&p=782439&hilit=chord+symbol#p782439