Im currently testing to edit bigband scores with Dorico.
In the middle of the piece there are some short solo passages where different brass-players are supposed to improvise a short solo.
Therefore I want chords to appear in those parts in these passages only.
The rhythm-section should have chords throughout the whole piece, of course.
Is the only way to achieve this the following?
Setup-Mode: Make chords visible not only for rhythm-instruments.
Setup-Mode: Make chords visible for the specific brass players who should play solo
Select everything in one brass-part.
Filter chord symbols
Deselect each chord that should be indicated in this part by CMD-Click (on mac) (unfortunately CMD + Marquee-Tool does not work to deselect multiple items)
I canāt test this as Iām not in front of Dorico right now but one workaround for now would be to have a duplicate instrument for each player. eg First trumpet would have two trumpets: one instrument would have chord symbols off, the other would have chord symbols turned on.
In galley view, and on the instrument part where the chord symbol is turned on, you would enter slash notation where there are solos and leave the āno chordā instrument stave blank. In page/engrave mode the slash notation sections (with chords) will then be visible and the non-chord instrument will not be visible.
You can use the lua script available before to generate the slash notation pretty quickly:
Your procedure is basically correct, Andreas, but you should find that you can select chord symbols more quickly by switching to a part layout and doing Ctrl+A to select all, then filtering chord symbols, then only Ctrl+clicking the chord symbols in the passage you want to remain to remove them from the selection before you switch on the āHideā property.
I think it would be much simpler just clicking on the chord symbol that the player should see. Some how I have to do the process of hiding the chord symbol in the parts and in the score. Is that the way it has to be done?
I would envision something like a tool, i.e. a trill that one could just mark from here to here selection, and have the chords show up, reveal for that instrument in that section.
Although there is no good way of having different chord symbols on different instruments right now (this is something we will add in future), Iām surprised that you find it so cumbersome to hide chord symbols in areas where theyāre not wanted that you would rather use text items! Clearly thatās only practical for simple chord symbols.
In the forthcoming update, as Iāve written elsewhere, there are two tools that I believe will make this less cumbersome: one is the ability to quickly select more chord symbols (or indeed more items of any kind), and the other is the ability to be able to bind a key command to hiding a selected chord symbol.
Itās the mental load of keeping stuff to be fixed later. If it was for publication it would not be a problem, but I have to keep going forward, rather than making lists of things I have to go back and sort. So I put chords in where I want them to be played, without having to think about turning them off elsewhere. With this stuff I look at each bar when Iām writing it and never again.
I agree that this is one of the major things for me as well.
Is there a way to handle chords in some instruments the same way that cues, repeats and slash-notation is handled? By creating a designated area in which the chords are shown? It could even possibly correspond to the rhythm slashes. One could check a box for any rhythm section to also show chord symbols? Wouldnāt that make sense?
I am looking forward to this issue being sorted out. Iād rather like to define myself where I want chord symbols to appear than to define where they should not appear. Right now I am getting a score full of symbols and I must hide 90% of them. Having different chord symbols for different player is also an issue: I might want to give the rhythm section symbols with all the modulations where as the solo player might get a simplified version.
Yeah, Iāll add my request for some more flexibility with chords as well.
Itās not unusual for me to write for example for Piano, Bass and Guitar where the piano would get more sophisticated versions of chords, C9, C13, C7 in one bar of music at places that correspond rhythmically to those changes and also have the Guitar play simple C7 just on beats 2 and 4, and then maybe just C at the beginning of the bar for the Bass. Currently this isnāt possible in Doricoā¦ (without a lot of workarounds)
Also, I believe that the default should be that chords DONāT appear in empty bars. If Iāve got the guitar resting for 16 bars thereās almost no reason to have him look at 16 empty bars of chords, he should get a 16 bar multi-measure rest. If a guitar player sees 16 bars worth of chordsā¦ theyāre gonna play whether or not the bars have rests in them or not! lol. (You can hide them of course, but this seems backwards in my opinion)
One other thing I just discoveredā¦ (unless I canāt find the solution)ā¦ Iāve got a guitar āPlayerā that has Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar and Mandolin. Dorico considers Mandolin a Rhythm Section instrument (not necessarily incorrectly), but in my scenario Iām using it strictly melodically while the other instruments Iām using more chord-ally. I want to hide the chords for just the Mandolin but keep them there for the other two guitars. It appears Dorico only allows you to hide or show chords for the Rhythm instruments for the WHOLE āPlayerā. It would be handy to be able to pick and choose which instruments individually within the player profile.
Check the āHiddenā button on the Properties panel.
Sadly I could not find a way to use the Filter menu option to help with the selection, but perhaps another user has a trick to choose only the chords in the Mandolin part without grabbing anything else.
