Dorico's bad enharmonic choices on chord symbols

[Steve_225]

I have a score where Dorico transposed concert D#m7 to B#m7 for alto sax. That’s technically correct but not very nice! Is there a way to tell Dorico to not do that by default?

[klavierpunk]

It is hard to assess the situation without more information on the score. What key is the score in? For example, if the piece is in B-major, the horn section will surely frown upon it, because this virtually forces them to play in forests of sharps. Cb-major, although slightly more inconvenient for non-transposing instruments, would by a much larger extent facilitate reading for the horn section.

I haven’t done this in Dorico yet so I don’t know the exact steps to accomplish this, but: Based on the assumption that the piece is indeed in B-major and you want the alto sax to play in Ab-major instead of G#-major while keeping B-major as the default key, you could try to redefine the saxophone’s transposition from Eb to D#.

EDIT: I remember that some years ago there were complaints about iReal pro respelling chord symbols to a simpler variant ignoring the context. I don’t know if they fixed this by now, but I remember that this was generally frowned upon, so players in that genre do seem to be enharmonic sensitive.

[FredGUnn]

@Steve_225

Is there a way to tell Dorico to not do that by default?

Engraving Options / Chord Symbols / Transposition

@klavierpunk

I haven’t done this in Dorico yet so I don’t know the exact steps to accomplish this, but: Based on the assumption that the piece is indeed in B-major and you want the alto sax to play in Ab-major instead of G#-major while keeping B-major as the default key, you could try to redefine the saxophone’s transposition from Eb to D#.

It already does this automatically by default, no?

The tricky one for transposing instruments is usually the F#/Gb split.

There are situations where Dorico will give an unwanted chord symbol appearance like G#m7 when Abm7 is desired, but if you edit just the root on that transposed symbol (don’t delete the whole chord) then Dorico is smart enough to apply that change for all instruments that use that key. If I change that in a Tenor Sax part, Dorico will also change it in the Trumpet part as well.

[klavierpunk]

@FredGUnn

It already does this automatically by default, no?

Dunno, I didn’t encounter the need for this in my own Dorico work yet. I was assuming that it doesn’t based on the OP’s description of his case.

[Derrek]

Nothing prevents one from trying it all out in a demonstration test file.
One doesn’t need permission to do so.

[Steve_225]

That engraving option is what I was looking for, and it should eliminate most of the manual adjustments. Thanks.