I would like to know how to give a player the instruction to add a capo (or move the capo) in the middle of a piece of music.
Currently, I am doing the following:
Have one player with two instruments, Guitar (guitar in standard tuning, no capo) and Capo 1 (guitar in standard tuning, full capo on fret 1). I chose those names so that the score contains “Capo 1” as a direction.
In galley view, put the first part of music onto “Guitar” and the second part of music onto “Capo 1”. This gives rise to a “Capo 1” instrument change directive in the part, as desired.
In total, I have a result that looks like the following:
The problem I have with this is that the chord symbols are not transposed. It seems that the display of chord symbols is only “per player” and not “per instrument”. If I right click the “Guitar & Capo 1” player I can set a player transposition, but this applies to the whole piece. What I want is that the chord symbols are transposed down a minor second but ONLY for the “capo 1” part.
I have not tried to use separate flows, but that seems inappropriate given that the change happens in the middle of a measure with no pause on either side.
The only other idea is to simply write the transposed chord symbols directly, but doing this interferes with the chord symbols that appear in other parts.
Do you have any suggestions for how to achieve this?
Until Dorico comes up with a more elegant solution, could you assign the guitars to separate Players and (through careful management of system breaks) combine the two Players into one Layout/Part to simulate a single Player?
Side note: As a guitarist, I would find this action to be impossible. Between movements or multi-measure rests, sure, but in the middle of a measure when the left hand is already occupied with a barre at the 3rd fret, what is the player supposed to do, reach around with the right hand, grab a capo (probably attached to head stock) and somehow place it behind the left-hand barre?
This video gives a demonstration of how to do it (in this case it’s moving from the capo from fret 3 to fret 4, but in my example the capo would be on the nut).
It’s possible to do this if you don’t want to display both main and capo chord symbols. If on the Players page of Layout Options you set “Used fretted instrument transposition” to “For notation and main chord symbols” then the main chord symbol (rather than the capo chord symbol) will be transposed, and it will be transposed by the amount set in the instrument (rather than the amount set in the player). This feature is really intended for use with detuned guitars but in your case you might be able to use it to have different transpositions of your chord symbol on the two different guitars.
Alternatively you could use local chord symbols to achieve a similar notated effect.
Thanks for the suggestion. Indeed, I only want to show one chord symbol (not both main and capo), but there is one issue with your suggestion: the guitar part is “tablature only”, which greys out “Use fretted instrument transposition” in the “Fretted Instruments” category of the Players Layout Options. Is there a way to work around that?
Otherwise, doing the following works:
In “Layout Options > Players > Fretted Instruments”, the “Guitar & Capo 1” player has “Notation and tablature” and “Use fretted instrument transposition: For notation and main chord symbols”
The “Guitar & Capo 1” player has two instruments, Guitar and Guitar with Capo 1. For the Capo 1 Guitar, note that I needed to both set the capo at 1 and also set the transposition “In staff notation, written middle C sounds as Db”.
The “Guitar & Capo 1” player has no capo on their own. (“Players” > “Chord Symbols” > “Capo Chord Symbol Definition”).
Ah, sorry, I missed that aspect. I’m afraid I don’t think my suggestion will work in that case. You may have to use local chord symbols in that case.
Yet another option would be to try setting the “real” intrinsic transposition of one of the guitars, using Library > Instruments. This would make the guitar work like a typical transposing instrument (e.g. Trumpet, Horn) so chord symbols would display transposed in a transposing layout. You’d need to set up a new instrument (or variant) for this, and apply it to just one of your guitars, so this isn’t entirely trivial - it might be that local chord symbols are easier to manage.
