I am trying to find the simplest way to copy and paste chord symbols. In Dorico, the chord symbol is not attached to the notes (which is understandable so you can write in a bar without erasing it). But, in order to copy the chord symbols, it seems like it adds some steps:
Select all the bars from the system track you want to copy
Filter chord symbols
Copy
Select the location you want to paste
Paste
I don’t see any keyboard shortcuts for selecting a bar in the system track. Since most of my chord symbol instruments are at the bottom of my band scores, this also adds the extra steps of scrolling up and down to make sure I’m at the right place.
Alternatively, you can command-click/select the chords you want to copy and paste. This is okay if it’s a few chords, but if it’s a lot, it leaves a lot of room for error in the pointing and clicking (individually) or selecting items you don’t want (command-click and drag).
Anyway, just seeing if anyone out there has a easier way of copying and pasting chord symbols. Thanks in advance.
There isn’t an easier way (though IIRC Select More works on chord symbols). It used to be that chord symbols copied and pasted with the music, but this was potentially disastrous (see Request for chord symbols to behave like system text - Dorico - Steinberg Forums for why). If my chord symbols are at the bottom of the screen and I need to find my place, I use Z and X to zoom in and out rather than scrolling. Bear in mind you don’t actually need the chord symbols to be on screen at the point at which you Filter.
I have tried many ways to copy chord symbols from one measure and paste to another to know avail. I tried using the system track, selecting it, using the filter, copying, did not paste later, and all permutations of that. Is there a video showing copying and pasting chord symbols?
Also, perhaps it is because I modified the Chord Symbol fonts? I select a section. Lyrics select, notes select, chord symbols never select, even when I use the “Filter->ChordSymbols” Can’t copy more than one Chord Symbol, either, like with a shift and continue to click. Doing it all by printing score and putting in by hand. Any thoughts?
There’s really no restriction on copying chord symbols. Select one, do Ctrl+Shift+A (Windows) or Shift-Command-A (Mac) to select more of them, copy them to the clipboard, select a note or rest at the position where you want them to appear, and paste.
This simply doesn’t work. Half of the chord symbols won’t don’t paste. Trying the filter chord symbols command actually filters them OUT. Please address this.
If I am doing much of this, I switch to the bass guitar layout in page view and zoom out to where I can see a whole section of chords. I find that easier than working with the system track.
And if you already have music written into the bass part, consider creating a new “rhythm section” instrument & layout that has no notes in it – just the chords. That makes it pretty easy to select a section of music just stretching the mouse. Once the chords are in the clipboard, you can paste them into the score or any other instrument layout or elsewhere in that same dummy instrument.
Just a reminder to anyone trying to copy chords, that once you have manually edited the chord in Engrave mode, it is no longer copyable by any method at all, at least in 3.5.12. You can’t copy it by alt clicking, nor with the system track, nor R, nor Ctrl+C and V, etc. For efficient workflow, I always leave manual edits for the end, after I’m done writing so I don’t get bit by this.
In the below gif, I select the slash bar, and the two chord symbols, then hit R, and the chord symbol that was manually edited does not copy.
This is an acknowledged bug that we have already stated will be fixed in the next version of Dorico. (Indeed it’s already fixed in Dorico for iPad if you try it there, though you can’t properly edit an individual chord symbol graphically in the iPad version, but you could take a project from your desktop computer over to the iPad and see that copying and pasting it now works as it should.)
@Rob_Catlender, if you want me to look into your crash, I can do so. Please provide both the diagnostic report produced by choosing Help > Create Diagnostic Report and the project file in which I can reproduce the problem, and the steps to reproduce the crash.
I’m trying out Dorico and I have a question about this issue since I don’t have engrave mode (in SE). Does this issue of manual changes cutting off regular workflow apply to things other than copy and pasting chords?
I’m not 100% sure, but offhand I don’t recall it affecting other areas of the program. As Daniel pointed out, this is fixed in their development versions, and he’s already mentioned multiple times that 4.0 is expected by the end of the year, so I don’t imagine this issue will be around much longer.
I’m having this issue as well. I’m trying to cut and paste chords from one part of the piece to another, and the chord symbols just don’t seem to get selected despite using the filter.
When I click on filter > chord symbols (with “select only” checked off), I expect the chord symbols to be highlighted so I can then cut and paste. But nothing is selected, and when I ctrl-V, I get whatever it was I had copied previously - not the chord symbols. I’ve tried selecting just the top line or all the parts, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
The only way I can select it is to click on one individually, and then I can cut and paste that single chord symbol.
Am I doing something wrong? Missing something?
Simple click and shift-click passage selections only select staff-attached items. Chord symbols, tempo marks, system text, key signatures and time signatures are all system-attached items, so they’re not getting selected in the first place (and filters are subtractive - you can only successfully filter something that’s already selected).
Use the System Track to select everything in the passage including the chord symbols, then filter chord symbols (exactly as the original poster typed at the top of this very thread!).
Ah. I didn’t know there was another way to select things.
It took a while for me to figure out how to do that, so I thought I’d mention it in case anyone else happens to have the same question.
Select the measures you want in the system track (orange bars)
Click the check mark on the right-most orange bar (this 2-step selection wasn’t obvious to me initially)
Right click > filter > chord symbols
Now you can cut and paste.
I filtered and copied the chord symbols following these steps, but pasting in the new score didn’t work.
But in the new score, when I press shift-Q on the first note, it shows the correct chord–and continues to do so if I use the right arrow to scroll through the piece. It’s as if the chord symbols are there but somehow invisible
