I’ve been through this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOB7tPj5pbY ) 3 times. I could reproduce the “j” change to the default chord symbol and have it show up in all the previous “maj7” chords in a project, even after closing Dorico and starting a new project.
So, those steps seem to work for adding an edited chord symbol to the default library.
I want to increase the size of the (b5) in ALL min7(b5) chords. I exactly followed the video steps to do so, but only but so far the edited size only appears in a Cmi7(b5) chord as it should: no other roots use the edited “mi7(b5)” chord symbol. (see attached). It’s a little difficult to see, but the “b” is slightly larger in the Cmi7(b5) chord vs the other 2 mi7(b5) chords, which I assume are still using the default chord symbol.
My edited Chord Symbols library:
I’m sure I’m missing a simple step somewhere to insure that my chord symbol edit is available in all new projects.
Dorico project file attached. chds for forum.dorico (587.6 KB)
Any help?
Thanks in advance. (BTW: the people/responses on this forum have been extraordinarily prompt and helpful!)
Bill
It is not possible to make a global adjustment to a b5 the way you are trying to do it. You can only make global changes if the suffix component appears in blue underneath when selected in that editor, and a b5 doesn’t. You can make a change by increasing the size in Engraving Options / Chord Symbols / Design. Dorico actually uses two different suffix flats, comp.csymAccidentalFlat and comp.csymAccidentalFlatSmall. It will use the small variant for percentages of 75% and lower and the larger one for 76% and up. If you change the percentage to 76% you’ll globally get the larger glyph like this:
Yes, you used the wrong flat glyph. This editor is very poorly designed because none of the accidentals that it presents to the user by default are ever used in chord symbol suffixes. I assume you used the flat from here, which is the wrong glyph:
That’s very useful information re not being able to edit the b5 suffix.
I increased the size of the “Scale factor for subscript and susuperscript” in the Engraving Options/Chord Symbols/Design section. That seemed to increase the alterations to a legible size. I still don’t understand/like D’s approach to editing chord symbols.
I am new to D, and I like a lot of how it handles music typesetting (I used Finale since it’s 1st version). “Intuitive” is not a word I would use to describe Dorico.
I really appreciate your information on this topic.
It is completely different than Finale’s approach. You seem to be trying to simply create overrides for everything rather than use Engraving Options. There certainly are plenty of situations that require overrides, but in your case I think most of them can be accomplished with the existing options, unless you are really fine tuning positioning issues. I would start a new file from File/New, add a bunch of chords, then play around with all the existing options and see how close you can get to what you want. Only after that start in with overrides.
I think a lot of the frustration with the non-intuitiveness of Dorico’s approach is that a lot of information that is needed to sufficiently edit chords is not documented anywhere. For some elements, like accidentals, the interface actively presents the wrong options. Unless you hang out on this forum, you’ll have virtually no way of getting that essential information.
You’re correct. Even as we type I’ve been spending time today in the Engraving Options/Chord Symbols in a new file, trying to adjust the symbols to my requirements. Making them “global” seems to be another issue, but I’ll keep working on that also.
Again, thanks for the useful info.
Bill
