Attached a small project with a few guitar harmonics.
The default style with the circle above works for the 2nd harmonic (open string left hand touches 12th fret). One can change the style in the properties panel but it only works correctly when you activate forced duration. For some weird reason the 1st and 2nd strings change to an uncommon notation of 6th string when you do not have it on. Correcting this is tiresome as the normal method using m to shift the string up or manually entering the string in many cases (I had 1-2 exceptions) does not work. If you press m nothing happens and if you press String in Notes and Rests property pannel it briefly opens and then deactivates the string entry option.
For artificial harmonics the default style also works although I have never seen this style in any guitar score. Changing the style to open diamonds completely upsets the tablature as you can see in the last example. That second style showing the normal pitch without harmonic is actually closer to the common guitar score harmonics style..
The choice by the Dorico team of showing the sounding pitch (as in the two natural harmonics examples) rather than the open string pitch (as shown after the style change of the artificial harmonics example) is very unfortunate as seldom used in guitar scores. I have dozens of paper guitar scores all using the normal pitch with the indication “arm” above and if required a XII, VII or V to indicate the 2nd, 3rd or 4th harmonic. This allows for much better consistency between artificial and natural open string harmonics. Who has ever seen the sounding pitch of the first string of a 4th harmonic (5th fret)? This note has 6 ledger lines!
Workaround to get a correctly sounding more common guitar notation for harmonics is of course to using a transposition in the expression map but than the tablature will not work.
The “white diamond notehead” style is not intended for use on fretted instruments - it’s intended for use on violin/viola/cello etc.
We are aware that there is a problem with the playback of the “Single notehead (sounding)” artificial harmonics which we hope to fix in a future version.
Thanks for the fast response. I found an article by Douglas Niedt showing the many notations used for harmonics for guitar. I think he mentions 312 possibilities. He does show the format of the second style which produces the weird tab also for guitar.
Just a little example here for a piece by Barrios. In this case they do show the sounding note. So this notation is used. In general you would not have a tablature for this type of score but there are only two issues with the two 5th harmonics one on the 9th and one on the 4th fret. The two open diamond notes are artificial harmonics. The roman fret numbers are all texts with the position adjusted in Engrave mode. So a lot of work.
I am facing exactly the same problem on Dorico Elements Version 6.1.10.6078 (Oct 8 2025). Is there an option to just overwrite the fret number and string on the tabs? That would solve the problem while you think how to fix this bug.
Do you want the e on the 5th string using the natural harmonic on the 7th fret? If so, the sounding note is one octave lower than you have written (I did not use your note length but that is not relevant).
Thanks Mavros, this helps, but I look forward to having it fixed. Each new step added like, open the properties pannel, find the correct selector, enable it, choose the string, adds a lot of time in the writting process when there are many natural harmonics in the piece. Mainly for those with bad eyesight like me.
Is there another possibility like changing the noteheads on the staff and writting independent positions on the strings and fret using the computer keyboard?
No the properties panel is the only option I think. In 2023 Dorico people mentioned in this forum that shortcuts would be created but till now nothing. You can open the properties panel with Ctrl/Cmd-8 by the way.
Hey Mavros, this is a little bit insane, but I have found a weird solution. I added a new player for classical guitar, next I copied everything on the original staff to this “secondary” staff (maybe there is an option to clone the staff?). I edited this secondary staff so the harmonic notation would show correctly only for the tabs. On the main staff I turned off the harmonic option for the notes (I got common notes), then I edited them to show open strings, turned their noteheads to diamond shapes, went to layout options and chose, show staff only for guitar 1 and show tabs only for guitar 2. I know that it is recommended to write real pitches for natural harmonics but I have seen more often people writting above the staff harm.5, harm.7 or harm.12 to show where to play instead of the real sound of the notes. IMHO, it is much better because it is leads the player direct to the point. What do you think?
That sounds as a good workaround to get both score and tabs as you want. It results in a very clear score.
I am a classical educated guitar player and only looked into tabs when I started playing flamenco where many pieces are tabs only with various methods to indicate the different left and in particular right hand techniques.
