As a professional arranger transitioning from Finale, I would like to request a workflow improvement regarding chord symbols in empty bars.
Currently, Dorico treats chord symbols as system/clef metadata rather than rhythmic content. Because of this semantic logic, if a bar contains only chord symbols, Dorico still forces a bar rest to appear.
In commercial music, jazz, lead sheets, and rhythm charts, a chord symbol is the musical content. Forcing arrangers to manually apply “Ends Voice / Starts Voice”, create transparent slash regions, or use “Remove Rests” layout by layout is an unnecessary bottleneck for a software that prides itself on automation.
Proposed Solution:
Please consider adding a global toggle in Layout Options > Players > Bar Rests that says: “Hide bar rests in bars containing chord symbols”.
This would bridge the gap between traditional engraving logic and practical commercial charts, saving hours of manual tweaking for rhythm section scores.
I haven’t used this option, so I am not sure that it will do exactly what you want, but in Layout Options > Players > Bar Rests and Multi-bar Rests, after selecting the Guitar layout in the Layouts list on the right, experiment with the check-box for Show bar rests in empty bars. Also play around with Consolidate, which is directly underneath that. With Consolidate: Multi-bar Rests selected, single bar rests are treated differently than when None is selected. Other users may have more complete information on this matter.
I am not sure that forces is the right expression here, Dorico displays the music and fills the gaps without music with rests, meaning rests display the space without music. You can let Dorico show them visually or not show them visually.
This guidance easily resolved a situation that would have been very uncomfortable for me—accepting the impossibility of hiding rests in measures containing only chord symbols (which have no written notes). Thanks a lot for the help!
Yes, that’s exactly what I wanted. In measures with notes, the rests do need to appear.
Thank you.
The only downside is that it seems if I save a page set up this way, Dorico won’t let me enter chord symbols. It looks like I’ll only be able to remove the rests after I finish writing the score, right?
In any case, it works for me. Thanks.
You can still enter chord symbols when bar rests aren’t displayed. Invoke the caret with shift-N or by double clicking, then enter the chords at any rhythmic position. You can also copy selected chords from other locations by option-clicking (alt-clicking) into the empty bar.
If you don’t need both regular slashes and small slashes in the same project, you can effectively create a Blank Notation region style. Just delete the Small Slash notehead so it is nothing …
Caveat is this bar will be spaced like a regular slash region bar as if it contained 4 quarter notes, so you may need to do a bit of manual spacing adjustment depending on what else is on the system.
I’d try typing whole notes (or another durations for another length measures) and then using suppress and hide noteheads/stems/rests to spread out internal chord changes. The more regular the time signatures, the easier it is, especially 4/4.
