Maybe I overlooked a possibility in the Engraving Options, but I haven’t found a way to write alternate chord changes in brackets over the standard changes.
You’re not overlooking anything, it’s not possible yet
Without alternate changes I can’t use Dorico for my jazz arrangements. I use alternate changes all the time, also without brackets, e.g. for theme changes and solo changes or changes for different soloists.
We haven’t figured out how best to tackle these requirements yet, as they are at odds with the approach we decided to take for the majority use case that all players need to see the same chord symbols (I will take issue with anybody who tells me that this is not the majority use case!), but we do plan to, in the fullness of time, as I wrote about in my blog discussing the current scope of the chord symbols feature. (I don’t blame you for not reading it, it was 6000 words long.)
In the meantime, you can use some workarounds to get the results you need, if you feel they’re worth the effort. For simple chord symbols without alterations etc. you can pretty easily enter them as text via Shift+X and position them above the main chord symbols in Engrave mode. You can add parentheses or brackets to chord symbols using Shift+X text, too, either by having a single item like “( )” or having “(” and “)” and positioning them independently. You can also add a real chord symbol a moment after the first one, e.g. by setting the rhythmic grid to 1/16th and then using Alt+right arrow to advance the popover to the next grid position, and entering your alternative chord symbol there, and positioning it above the current one in Engrave mode. You can then hide it in the layouts in which it should not appear by way of the ‘Hide chord symbol’ property, though you will have to set this in each layout in turn.
I realise that none of the above is as good as actual features to support these requirements, but that’s why they’re called workarounds, after all.
OK, thanks Daniel.
Any update to this since July?
Scrap that.
Alternate chord symbols of the variety that TootSweet talked about in his/her OP are NOT any more available than they were when this thread was started.
I misread.
Is there a way now to do that in Dorico 2.2. more easily?
nothing new in 2.2.20
Thanx