Hello,
For Pop music sheet, I need to write anticipated chords on empty bars.
Is there a sign I can write above the chord (like a slur sign) to indicate it?
I also would like the bars to keep the same length independently of the number of bars by staves.
For example, 4 bars would be the half size of an 8 bars stave.
I there an easy way to doing it?
Best,
For your first question, can you post a pic of what you want? If the bars are empty, then the chords are a cue I assume. I would be inclined to just use a slash voice cue to make sure the rhythm is clear:
For your second question, you mean like the old onion-skin hand copying days when you could sketch out the layout in advance then reproduce it on multiple parts before copying the notes, so the layout was consistent? Off the top of my head I can’t think of an easy way to do that (I’ve never wanted to do it in Dorico) but maybe someone else will have a solution.
It sounds like cellicello is looking for proportionaly spacing, which is normally a bad idea. You can try setting a custom spacing ratio of 2 on the Note Spacing page of Layout Options, but I don’t think you will actually find yourself happy with the results unless the music is rhythmically very simple and uses only a few note values that are close to each other in duration.
Oh, ok, yeah 2:1 proportional spacing is definitely a bad idea. I thought he was trying to keep the bars even in each system regardless of the music they contain, like an old hand-copying layout. Something like this, where all bars are even on each system:
Hello FredGUnn and Daniel,
Thank you for your reply 
As for my first question, I agree that using a slash voice cue will make the rhythm clear.
I’ll do it.
About my second question, I was looking to find an easy way to keep the bar length even.
As for 8 bars, all the stave long and 4 bars half stave long for example.
I attached a score written by hand.
Obviously different circles of musicians may have different conventions, but I can’t say I’ve ever had a need for this type of shorthand notation. As your example is lacking any complicated extensions, I would think it would be fairly easy to accomplish in a program such as InDesign or Illustrator though. You could probably even do it in Word. In Dorico you would have a lot of manual adjustment in Engrave, probably so much that it isn’t worth the time when it could be quickly entered in a DTP program, especially if you started from a template that already had all of your basic design elements ready to be copied.
Unless I’m misreading and the # signs are something else, was there a reason to write “Cm G# Cm” rather than “Cm Ab Cm”?
I would guess maybe because guitar players favor sharp keys?
Ah, I’ve seen this sort of proportional notation in really compact Nashville chord charts. You can fit a ton of info on a single page this way.
I’m not a guitarist, but I would have thought a i - VI - i progression (or I - iii - I in a major key) that only changes one note by one semitone would have been something they might know about.
I would guess the hard part of playing chords on a guitar is changing from one chord to the next, not finding the individual chords.
LOL! Yeah, seems reasonable but …
I was doing a gig a few years ago with a pretty famous (infamous?) drummer’s band, and he had brought in a rock guitarist for a few tunes. I don’t remember why, but we had to play a big band arrangement of the James Bond theme in this gig, which ends on an E minor-major 9th chord. The guitarist missed it the first 2 passes at the rehearsal so the arranger asked what was going on. The guitarist said, “I don’t think that’s possible,” LOL!
Ah yes… the min-maj9. It’s so… “secret agent movie”… ha!
Obviously It should have been written Eb #5 b9
After one year I try again to ask how to show anticipated chords on the chords symbols,
with or without notes on the staves.
I would like to add dots (in pink) to show on which beat the chord must be played.
and anticipated chords rhythm value. (in blue)
I send you a Sibelius screenshot.
I didn’t express myself properly.
I would like to keep bar space equal in all staves, independently of what I write within the bar.
I sent a screenshot with the first stave who is not even.
I would like it stays as the second staves
Here is an approach which might meet your needs, or might not! No guarantees given.
In Write mode, enter some notes in a second voice (eg Down-stem Voice 1). The notes should be the shortest duration that will exist in the piece, or at least in each system. For example, if the shortest notes will be 8th notes, then fill one bar with those. Select them, and maybe move them down an octave or so (out of the way for when you enter the notes which you want to see). Open the Properties panel and under Common > Color, change their Opacity to 0%. While they are still selected, in Engrave mode > Properties > Notes and Rests, enable Hide stem and Hide ledger lines. Go back into Write mode. Select the whole bar and press R to repeat into the following bar, and the next, and so on. Then enter the notes which you actually want to see into another voice (eg Up-stem voice 1).
You might find it easier to leave the hiding of the notes in the second voice until later on and select them by using Edit > Filter > Voices > whichever voice you chose. You might also want to enter the “real” notes before entering the second voice and hiding it.
The spacing between barlines should now be equal. One big downside is that you might have to choose quite a small staff size to make things fit. A lesser downside is that you will probably have to flip stem directions in the visible voice because there is a second voice on the staff, even though it has been hidden. A third issue could be that this method might only be usable for systems of 4 bars, unless the shortest note value is reasonably long.
I know a couple of musicians here in Japan who use this handwritten format.
I’ve never used InDesign or Illustrator. I’d suggest Excel, where column widths can be set to ensure the constant beat spacing, and cell borders can can be used to add whichever lines are required.
Can MusGlyphs be used in Excel? In a quick check it didn’t work for me, but my version of Excel is very old.
On lead sheets I often need to add rhythm indications above chord symbols, either when the staff is already occupied by music with a different rhythm, or when I want to leave the staff free for musicians to add their own notation.
I haven’t needed this recently, but a quick try indicated that adding the rhythm as system text in the MusGlyphs font would work well.
(I’m also using MusGlyphs to add alternative chord symbols.)
