Hello, I’ve been experiencing a strange behaviour that I didn’t see in Dorico 4 and before.
Multi-measure rests in parts aren’t broken by Chord Symbols. Instead they appear all crammed together along the multi-measure rest for some reason. Is there anyway to prevent this and make Chord Symbols break them? Maybe I’m doing something wrong or there’s an option I’ve enabled/disabled without realizing?
I’ve looked for this in the forum and people seem to have problems regarding bars not joining multi-measure rests or other things, so I’m sorry in advance if this was covered before. Thank you.
You’re right that in Dorico 4, chord symbols would break multi-bar rests, but we changed this in Dorico 5. If you want to ensure that the multi-rests are broken, consider adding a slash region in those bars, or use Engrave > Split Multi-Bar Rest.
I found this “Split Multi-Bar Rest” option. The problem is that when, for example, I’m working with parts, when I navigate between them it resets to not being split again. Is there any way to make the split permanent?
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to replicate that behaviour.
For example, when I work on a file of two instruments, and I am editing the first instrument’s part, I go to Engrave and select Split Multi-Bar Rests. It splits the rests successfully. Then I switch to the second instrument, work on that part, and then when I go back to the first instrument’s part, the multi bar rests are joined again with the crammed chord symbols.
I’ve even tried to export said parts before going back to the layout that has the multi-bar rests and the exported PDF never splits them.
The only workaround I’ve found for this is to manually hide the crammed chord symbols over the multi-bar rests, but I have to go to each part and do it manually on each MBR, which is severely time consuming.
@igalindo, this is not an answer to your question, but simply a notational question out of pure curiosity.
Why do you not want to use a slash region, as Daniel suggests? I imagine that if I were reading this I’d have a bit of cognitive dissonance: am I “off duty” during the rest or, because I see chords, am I supposed to do something?
Please do not read any criticism into this; I am genuinely curious, as it’s not something I’ve ever done (or, I think, seen).
I can’t speak for @igalindo obviously, but I’ve often done this for an optional part. Or I might put changes in a Piano with rests even if I want them tacet, just in case a Guitar player is missing on the gig or rehearsal, or if the vocalist wants to rehearse with the Pianist, etc.
I’m pretty sure I prefer the old behavior here too. If I have this in a Guitar part …
There seems to be a bug with Split Multi-Bar Rest too, as it doesn’t appear to be undoable. If I select all the chord symbols and apply Split Multi-Bar Rest then I can’t undo that action and am left with this permanently:
The signpost for this doesn’t seem to be working either. I can’t remember what it looked like in D4 (and don’t have it currently installed) but turning this on doesn’t do anything:
I also wanted to mention this is fairly common notation in all of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington transcriptions that a zillion high school kids play every year. They usually include the chords in the Piano part, even if Duke wasn’t playing, to help with rehearsal or if there’s no Guitar player in the band. Here’s the perusal score to Cottontail for example:
And my instinct has always been to show slashes and chords and give a written instruction like tacet unless guitar is missing. That way, it lays out better, and any kind of rhythmic hits in the comping can be incorporated. If I really want to be clear about its optionality, I put the changes in parentheses.
But I “totally get” that we all have slightly different ways of handling optional kinds of things.
It’s a fair question. As I mentioned on another post related to a different topic, I can’t use slash regions for those rests because of requirements from the client I work with. I normally modify and format batches of old XML files, and I also export the corresponding parts. The files that use slash regions normally come already with those regions established, so it’s unfortunately not up to me to modify them.
I agree that for normal uses, slash regions should be the way to go if I wanted the player to accompany or improvise over those measures.
I just noticed one signpost showed up in this example. Not sure why only one and not the others. There’s definitely something not working correctly with these.
For the JALC transcriptions, the notation is a transcription, so the Piano has to match the recording. The chords are just there to assist with rehearsal but can’t really have slashes. I just picked Cottontail at random, but almost all their transcriptions follow that house style.
Actually, I didn’t think of it. While I think that if the “Split Multi-Bar Rest” Engrave menu option worked permanently, that would be the best solution, chord symbol regions are a much faster workaround than manually hiding chord symbols.
Confirming that on replicating your example I also lose the Split signposts.
And for that matter, on closing (and saving) the project and reopening, not only have the signposts disappeared graphically, but their effect has disappeard.
Actually, I wasn’t suggesting you manually hid chord symbols. Even with the default setting that rhythm instruments should always show chord symbols, adding a Chord Symbol Region prevents multibar rests from forming. It’s not an either or.
Sure, that would work. You’d still have to manually create a split at the Bb7 in the first system in the my example though. I’m trying to think of a situation where the new behavior is preferable and am coming up empty. If I want the chords to show, and haven’t hidden them by one method or another, why would anyone not want them to break the rests? The chords are sort of useless without the beat/bar placement info.
Ironically, this would be perfect for me at this moment. My problem with it is that on the contrary when I use Split Multi-Bar Rest, it doesn’t stay split. Do you select all of the chord symbols of the file and then go to Engrave>Split Multi-Bar Rest?
