Playing Technique editor

I am trying to create guitar diagrams in the Playing Technique editor, but I am not able to move the objects separately because of the connection lines between them. I applied No Attachment Point on every object including the attachment lines between the objects, but they stay connected. Also, is there a way to lock an object to avoid it moving from its position?

I didn’t realize that all the Guitar diagram elements are already present in Dorico, so I assume it should in fact be possible to create them myself. However I can’t find a way to get the editor to work. I could not find information about this in the manual. This is how far as I got:

The various graphical elements for making chord diagrams are indeed included in the Bravura font, but that certainly isn’t the way we will implement them when it comes to having a proper built-in feature for them: we will draw them using primitives rather than font characters. I think you will struggle to create workable chord diagrams in the playing techniques editor, but you can have a go! There’s no way to disable the attachment between components (and it’s essential to keep the items positioned consistently relative to one another).

Yes, I guessed already that you will not do it this way for the official implementation. Till then I’m trying to find a way to engrave songs for my client in Dorico by putting together the basic chords I need for his songs. It’s mainly triads and a V7. I got a very nice result this morning in 10 minutes now I understand the editor better. As long as I have a new added object on its correct spot before adding a next object, it goes well. I believe this would be acceptable for my client:

Yes, I’d say that looks pretty good!

If you already have Finale, you could use the bundled ‘Seville’ font in Dorico’s Playing Techniques. Each glyph is a complete finger diagram for common positions.

Yes, that is a very easy way to have some guitar chord diagrams…!

I typed in MS Word a b c d e f g h …etc… and got this

The only bummer is that I place a huge priority on slightly different chord voicings, even for standard chords. Example, on the basic G chord, I always mute that low B. So I’ve resorted to creating them in paint.NET. I’ve amassed a pretty big collection of them saved as PNG files, if anyone wants them…



I’ve worked out that ABCDEFG are minor chords of those names, and the lower case abcdefg are the major chords. The other 200 symbols are beyond my recognition skills.

Thanks, good to know.