Query about notating inverted chords

Hello Dorico wizards.

I work with a lot of old sheet music, pre- rock 'n roll, which was almost always written by songwriters who wrote at the piano. The tunes are fundamentally different in how chords progress compared to a typical modern songwriter with a guitar in hand. It’s quite “pianistic” to use a lot of inversions, which I often want to notate to indicate a specific bass movement. This is generally straightforward, but there are cases where I can’t get what I want.

For instance, with a progression such as ||Eb Eb/Db C7 / || the 2nd chord symbol will only display as /Db — no Eb. I guess this is because the Eb root hasn’t changed, because if the 1st chord has a different root it works as desired. However if I enter Eb7/Db it also works, but that’s not really what I want. Eb7/Db suggests a secondary dominant that suggests resolution to Ab/C. But in my example, the Db is a passing tone leading to a different secondary dominant C7, which would most like resolve to F-something.

I suppose this is considered “common practice”, and Dorico doesn’t let you mess with that as a rule. But is there a setting (or a hack) that would defeat this?

It is, indeed, a simple setting to show only the altered byss symbols or to show them every time:

Engraving Options > Chords Symbols > Altered Bass Symbols

1 Like

Aha! That got 'er done, thank you!