Hi Dorico team and community,
disclaimer first: I like the architecture of global chord symbols and know why they are not selected in normal range selections - I’m fine with that.
Anyways, I’d like a special behaviour: If only chord symbols are selected and I shift-click on another one, Dorico should select all chord symbols in between and nothing else. What do you think?
I think selecting anything else in between except the things I clicked on is quite awkward, but that is what it currently should do if it was consequent, IMHO. Actually it simply ignores shift-clicks on chord symbols if only chord symbols selected before, but that’s not helpful either.
Editing chord symbols would benefit a lot from a useful range selection. And yes, it might be possible now (lasso or system track selection with filters) but I think it’s not as fast and easy as I got used to in Dorico.
I’d like to know what you think of this idea!
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Have you tried Select More, Ctrl-Shift-A? It’s not exactly what you’re asking for, but it’s handy for selecting chord symbols.
Hi Dan, thanks for the suggestion. “Select More” is handy sometimes, but I don’t really like it because it isn’t always predictable and not very precise (what editing is all about)… on some chord symbols it won’t select more than the bar if pressed multiple times, after selecting one line (which sometimes makes sense musically, sometimes not) it goes on to the whole player, if multiple chord symbols are selected, the selection won’t extend at all (maybe selecting some lines by selecting one object in each would speed up some process).
I agree, this is logical and would be a great feature to have. I also wanted to point out that while Select More works for chords (sometimes), Select to End of Flow does not, which honestly just seems like a bug. I’ve been trying to train myself to never use Select More as it has screwed me with off-screen tuplets more times than I can count, so I’ve been trying to only use Select to End of Flow in those situations which will select tuplets, but unfortunately not chords.
Anyway, in the meantime, I’ve created a keycommand to filter chord symbols, so that’s really only one more click if Select More isn’t working for you. Select the region you want by whatever method, apply the keycommand, and you have the chords selected.
Been thinking about chord selection again, while working on a project that has me drafting tons of different chord progressions and copying, altering, transposing, etc. Every time I do it, it feels like one or two extra clicks than necessary even with a shortcut for filter chords, and it requires me to have system track enabled (which I normally prefer to disable).
I would also ultimately prefer click (leftmost chord symbol), shift click (rightmost chord symbol), but I know that chord selection changed a while back because people were accidentally moving/copying things they didn’t mean to.
One alternative: a shortcut for “select system track corresponding to currently selected note range” where I can click one note at the beginning of the desired range, shift click a note at the end, hit the shortcut and it does a full vertical (up and down, including chords) select of the full system. The current selection expansion options seem to only expand horizontally. Then I could copy and paste music with the chord symbols attached without accidentally leaving them off (happens often), and I could build that shortcut into a macro of (click leftmost note), (shift click rightmost note), macro [select system area, filter chords]
Or, if the system track has to stay involved and visible, there could be a shortcut to tick system track box that I can macro into the chord selection shortcut, so it’s click (leftmost system track bar), shift click (rightmost system track bar), macro [tick system track box, filter chords]
Thanks for all the hard work! Super grateful for this app, now more than ever.
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