Lead sheets showing chord symbols and no staff lines

[Nicolas_Longo]

Thank you so much for all those sum-up tips
QUESTION : do you know how to write just a GRID with chords, a jazz chord progression, but no staves or notes ? (juste une grille de jazz classique?)

Merci d’avance

[Maarten_Kruijswijk]

@Nicolas_Longo Welcome to the forum.
You mean something like iRealPro? So far I know that is not possible.

I always make just an part with slash regions and the chords. It is super clear and readable I think.

[judddanby]

You might be able to achieve a somewhat satisfactory look using a 0-line staff (search the forum with that term) with full barlines.

Not entirely sure what would be involved (away from my computer) in getting the chord symbols inside the staff area. Probably manual dragging in Engrave Mode?

Do you want slashes? (slash region) If not, you’d have to Edit > remove rests. You’d need to apply a chord symbol region (or have the instrument set up to show chords in player settings).

I’ve never tried to make one of these (as you can tell ) I’ll check back later to see if you tried this.

[Nordine]

@Nicolas_Longo

Thank you so much for all those sum-up tips
QUESTION : do you know how to write just a GRID with chords, a jazz chord progression, but no staves or notes ? (juste une grille de jazz classique?)

Merci d’avance

Like this? Yes you can!

[Remi_Bolduc]

Non, je n’ai pas encore essayé cela. Mais crée un post, et tu auras une solution.

[Maarten_Kruijswijk]

Ok, that is very nice @Nordine but can you show how?

[Nordine]

Will try to make a video tutorial about it.

[judddanby]

(Lots of steps, as far as I can tell during my first attempt, ongoing as I type.)

[Maarten_Kruijswijk]

That would be great @Nordine

[judddanby]

@Nicolas_Longo, your first step will involve being set up in Dorico to work with 0-line staves. I’ll post a couple of forum links from @FredGUnn, who — along with @Maarten_Kruijswijk, @Nordine, and others — is one of our fellow members who does a lot of jazz work.

Instrument with zero lines (0-line Staff)

Yeah, there was a change in how Dorico handles these between D4 and D5. I think I figured it out and detailed it in this post. Here’s a new doricolib file for D5 that creates both a 0-Line and 1-Line instrument in the Custom category. Additionally, it creates a Clef for the 1-Line Staff that defines the line to be middle C for ease of input. The image appears wrong in the right panel, but is correct in the score. If you delete that old doricolib file and use this one instead, it should work cor…

Instrument with zero lines (0-line Staff)

Unzip the file, copy the doricolib file inside the zip to your DefaultLibraryAdditions folder (just search the forum for the location of that if you don’t know), close restart Dorico if it was already open, and it should appear in the Custom category in Setup.

[judddanby]

(@Nordine, apologies for “stepping on your toes” by adding this text-and-pic post before we benefit from the video I hope you make. I’ve been in a very intentional learn-Dorico-more-deeply phase, and took Nicolas’ post as my daily exercise/challenge.)

@Nicolas_Longo, trying this for the first time, and using almost entirely Dorico’s defaults (I adjusted just a couple of the chord symbol Engraving Options that bother me most), I came up with this (significantly less hip-looking than “Nordine’s”, but a start):

If that looks anything like you want, read on…

(1) Once I set my Dorico Application Support library up as discussed in the links above, I made a four-bar example with a 0-line custom instrument:

(2) In Engraving Options I adjusted the minimum barline protrusion to extend them:

(3) Next I created a Slash Region over all four measures, and in the Properties Panel:

• adjusted the Slash [vertical] pos[itioning] to move them down
• set Count appearance to “Do not show” to hide the “(4)” that was automatically added
• (You could also choose the Small slashes option if you prefer the look)

(4) Finally, I typed in my Chord symbols.

[Nordine]

@judddanby

(@Nordine, apologies for “stepping on your toes” by adding this text-and-pic post before we benefit from the video I hope you make. I’ve been in a very intentional learn-Dorico-more-deeply phase, and took Nicolas’ post as my daily exercise/challenge.)

No problem my friend … But, you just nail it! Bravo.

[Nordine]

Here is my video clip, I couldn’t record my voice, due to the noisy macbook mic lol. Hope this helps:

[Nordine]

Once you setup your chords leadsheet, you can later change to another handwritten music font and try the overall change look.

[Maarten_Kruijswijk]

Awesome, thanks.

For myself I doubt if I will do it this way. Exporting as SVG and remove the lines in Affinity Designer is maybe faster.

[Nordine]

I think they won’t print out even if you export as a Mono PDF.

But as you said you can remove the lines in Ai or Affinity Designer.

Below was a response from @dspreadbury concerning the zero width lines:

Non-zero width lines still have a thickness, so of course lines will be there. In particular with PDF and PostScript, there is a special case that if you set the line width to zero, the rendering engine interprets this as a request to render the thinnest line possible on the output device. This typically means the line will be rendered as a one-pixel-wide line regardless of the scale or transformation applied.

I believe this is what Qt itself does in its PDF output, which is why you will get a line a single pixel thick.

The only reason you might not see the line when exporting a bitmap format is that the fixed pixel resolution of the bitmap file is sufficiently coarse that a very thin line falls between two pixel boundaries, and hence disappears.

[Maarten_Kruijswijk]

Yes that is also the reason I prefer the affinity way. I leave lines just normal and remove them really.

And to be honest I personally prefer just a leadsheet with staves and slashes, I think there is nothing wrong with that.

[Nordine]

@Maarten_Kruijswijk

And to be honest I personally prefer just a leadsheet with staves and slashes, I think there is nothing wrong with that.

haha! yeah sure

[dan_kreider]

You could also just use the “invisible” clef.

[Nordine]

ha! I missed that Dan