Slash Chords (Altered Bass Notes)

[Dewittgz]

Can’t figure this out. If you look at this slash chord below in picture 1 it has so much space between the slash and the notes. This becomes a problem when I have many in a row. I love the Finale Jazz font I’m using. I want all the slash chords (or Dorico calls them Altered bass notes?) to have the spacing presented in engraving options in picture 2. How can I accomplish this without changing font? The slash is too big and the spacing isnt right. Thanks in advance.

[FredGUnn]

Use Library / Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs to tighten up the spacing.

There’s not a way to change the slash size through the interface, but I created a doricolib file that will give you control over this. Here’s a thread to walk through how to use that if you want:

Chord roots with accidentals too far from slash

Dorico factors in the accidental height here, even if it wouldn’t cause a collision. This is obviously not always desirable, and can cause visual discrepancies as you’ve discovered like below (middle alignment selected): [slashes] I don’t have an easy solution for you other than don’t use diagonal arrangement. It’s fine with linear: [linear] Your accidental positioning is a bit wonky though IMO. If you really want superscripted accidentals, I would bring the size down a bit. Under Engravin…

[Dewittgz]

For anybody that needs a solution to this I found it. This was a nightmare to try to solve. I spent days experimenting with all different Kinds of settings trying to understand how the chord symbol editing window worked, and how Dorico was handling fonts.

I was able to change the slash. If you go to Library - Chord Symbols… In that box you type in any slash chord. I did a simple C/E. Then I double clicked on the slash in the editing window which takes you to another editing window. In that window is where you can completely change the slash glyph and resize it however you want. I found a glyph from a jazz font I used in Finale. When you make your edit and click ok it’ll go back to the original editing window in Library - Chord Symbol… Then you can edit spacing as well. For me this changed all the spacing and the slash glyph for every slash chord. I don’t know why or how. I didn’t have to hit save as default either (at the bottom left). The only thing that comes to mind is the original glyph I was using had an inherited amount of space between the chord and bass note. When I changed the glyph it wasn’t so exaggerated.

A disclaimer. When you change the glyph in the second editing window you can’t undo it. The only way to undo it for me was to start a new session. So just make sure you experiment with the correct glyph you want in a dummy session so you don’t mess up a session you’re working on. I guess you could load up your default settings from the library manager but I didn’t try that and it got confusing.

The slash chords are the final result. Im happy with the results.

[FredGUnn]

@Dewittgz

I double clicked on the slash in the editing window which takes you to another editing window. In that window is where you can completely change the slash glyph and resize it however you want

@Dewittgz

For me this changed all the spacing and the slash glyph for every slash chord. I don’t know why or how

This window is the Edit Chord Symbol Component window. In this window you aren’t editing a chord symbol but rather a chord symbol component. As you are editing a chord symbol component, these edits will be reflected wherever that component is in use. If you want to understand how Dorico is keeping track of this internally, the name is listed at the top:

Dorico is expecting the chord symbol slashes to appear at specific locations in a SMuFL font:

When MakeMusic converted their fonts to SMuFL they did not do a comprehensive job which would allow their fonts to be compatible with Dorico. If I look at the glyph set of Finale Jazz Text Regular, it is missing both of these glyphs at that location.

Looking at Finale Jazz, it does have the E87B glyph, but not the E87C:

Basically, the MM fonts are not fully compatible. As they are no longer being developed it’s likely they will never be and really are not recommended for use with Dorico. You will always have to do some manual fixing to use MM fonts with chord symbols in Dorico.

@Dewittgz

A disclaimer. When you change the glyph in the second editing window you can’t undo it. The only way to undo it for me was to start a new session. So just make sure you experiment with the correct glyph you want in a dummy session so you don’t mess up a session you’re working on. I guess you could load up your default settings from the library manager but I didn’t try that and it got confusing.

This can be reset from the library manager. As I mentioned above, just keep track of what Dorico calls this internally and then reset that one single element from Library Manager / Collections / Music Symbols: