Thoughts on Chord Implementation

[PracticeWithMe]

@sedi

As a teacher, I frequently run into situations where I need to differentiate chord complexity on a per-player basis.

My arrangement may need a Cm9/Eb at one point, but as for my little ukulele player, I’d rather just give him a “Gm” to play instead. Of course one can say that he will have to learn how to do this by himself anyway, but I really think the complexity level / learning curve steepness should not be defined by restrictions of Dorico.

Yes, this is also true for those of us who are making charts for performances with musicians from varying backgrounds. Jazzers are comfortable with one thing, while Legit and Rockers need to see other things. To get the best result from the group as a whole, sometimes the communication has to be tailored to the player.

edit I should also mention that this in no way diminishes my excitement at the implementation you’ve revealed already, Daniel. An elegant solution is a wish, but I can think of plenty workarounds to accomplish what I’m after.

[David_Tee]

@Daniel at Steinberg

…Chord symbols will have a separate track in Play mode to which you can assign one of your existing sounds, if you like, or you can manually load something and assign it in Play mode. At the moment playback is very rudimentary (it plays a single chord of a quarter in length for each chord symbol) but this is something we can build on in future.

HI Daniel,

Any further progress on the playback mode since you wrote this ? Personally I’d find it useful to have chords playing for each beat (and assign them to a jazz guitar). If I follow you correctly I could achieve that by entering chord symbols for each beat - but obviously that would be fairly long winded. I appreciate this an ongoing area of development.

[tonywardarts]

@David Tee

Any further progress on the playback mode since you wrote this ?

Chords will have a separate playback channel; this was confirmed in John Barron’s latest Discover Dorico video, but it was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference.

[PaulWalmsley]

Currently the chords will play back as constant notes until the next chord change. This is something that we’re likely to add more control over in the future. One nice thing about the current implementation is that if you enter the chords via midi then Dorico will identify the chord and display the symbol, but will use the notes you played during playback.

[Derrek]

@PaulWalmsley

Currently the chords will play back as constant notes until the next chord change. …

Then I hope there will be an active N.C. (No Chord) option as part of the chord-selection process.

[PaulWalmsley]

Yes, among the many chord types we do indeed have N.C.

[dspreadbury]

Yes, indeed. You can enter “NC” into the Shift+Q popover and you will get the expected “N.C.” non-chord symbol.