the NONE chord symbol

Dorico
1

I use chord symbols exactly as they appear on the leadsheet of a jazz tune, In addition I found their playback an easy way to get the harmonic context to practice over the playback of a tune, using either a jazz organ or a sustained piano sound, withiut having to create a full piano score

Dorico documentation says that a chord is played back til the location of the next chord in score. Fine with that

But sometimes I’d like that a chord is played for a shorter duration. I tried to use the “None” chord to specifiy where I’d like it to stop being played, but I observed the following (may be I didn’t do the righ thing to create a none chord !)

  • Nothing indicates that a None chord symbol has been entered in the score
  • previous chord playback continues to play til next “non nul” chord.

So I have two questions

  • What is the complete semantics of the none chord, appearance in the score, how is it played back ?
  • Any suggestion to achieve what I descrived here above, i.e. indicate the play back duration of a chord ?

Thanks in advance for your help.

2

Dear mhch4,
I think it is nc that has to be entered (no chord) in the popover to achieve the result you need.
Hope this helps!

[Edit] : Sorry, I just realized that nc and none give the same N.C. chord marking. However, the marking appears, so I am quite surprised that you write nothing appears. Maybe your nc has not been properly entered? In any case, the rhythmic position of the chords (and N.C.) should suffice to give a very clear idea of the rhythmic value of the chord, without cluttering the score with additional rhythmic markings.

3

Well I retried and that time when I entered a NC chord, there was a NVICVI text appearing the the score.
A bit weird piece of text, maybe due to the font I use for chord symbols ! I’ll try to fix this.

Any way chord playback worked exactly as I wished

So I might have made a mistake during my first experiment. Please ignore my previous message.

4

Perfect !

5

One suggestion: a way to select how the NC chord is engraved

Currently only “NC” seems available. There could be other less intrusive ways (at least for my way to use it) like “-” or even nothing,

or whatever seems appropriate.

6

If you want nothing at all to appear, at least, you can set the ‘Hide’ property.

7

Thanls, Good to know there is a hide property, I was looking for it. Does it apply to everything ?

Anyway, I’d prefer to have something visible although discreet like “-” so I know there is a chord notated at this point. It seems logical to be able to configure the way it is engraved in addition to all other possible regular chord entries

And by the way, is there a way to align selected things ?

For instance sometimes I add beat counting info on some staffs over the rest entries, like “1 2 3 &” “&” "e 2 a, "etc … meant to help students learning to count properly multi bar phrases that have a complicated rhythm ( I use Shifr X for that over rest signs) Using the engraving graphic move option isn’t too convenient nor accurate for that

8

You might use the lyrics tool for this kind of marking, since it’s correlated with the rhythm. Using the caret, you can input lyrics anywhere you need (caret and rhythmic grid, of course). This will ensure that the markings are reasonably placed in all Layouts where they appear.

9

The ‘Hide’ property is specific to chord symbols (it’s in the Chord Symbols section of the Properties panel).

You can also double-click an N.C. chord symbol in Engrave mode and edit it in the editor that pops up, removing the “N.C.” symbol and adding a hyphen or whatever you wish. This will affect only the single chord symbol you have edited. It’s also possible to change the appearance of all N.C. chord symbols using the Project Default Chord Symbol Appearances dialog, but I wouldn’t necessarily advise this.

10

Thanks for all your suggestions