How to format this special type of chord symbol?

[noah35becker]

I work for a composer who writes chord symbols like this…

… which are interpreted like this:

In the past, I’ve rigged this up in Dorico by combining altered-bass and polychord notation, e.g. C#/A#|F#, with altered bass notes in linear arrangement and polychords in stacked arrangement, and with the altered-bass separator customized so it’s a space character instead of a slash. System text takes care of the # of beats.

It’s important that I input this material as chord symbols, not text, so that each chord symbol transposes accurately in transposing parts.

Occasionally, this composer also writes chord symbols with four pitches, e.g.…

… which I’m now having to tackle in Dorico for the first time.

Anybody have any ideas how I might handle these four-pitch chords?

[dan_kreider]

You probably ought to input these as text, honestly. MusGlyphs has a bold variant that would probbaly work. You’ll want to create a paragraph style that has pretty tight line leading.

[noah35becker]

Yeah, I feared I’d have to do it as text, then manually transpose for transposing parts… Damn. At least setting up the Paragraph Style thoughtfully will save some time. Thanks @dan_kreider.

If anybody else has any ideas about a chord-symbol-based workaround, let me know!

[Rikard]

I haven’t seen that before. Where does that notation come from?

[noah35becker]

It’s just the way this composer writes—idiosyncratic for him, makes sense for his music