Dorico Pro 6’s chord symbols customize function now closes to the level of Finale (Part 2)
- tarokoike
- Jun 9
- 12 min read
As a continuation of the previous article, which mainly introduced the chord symbol editing function before Dorico Pro 5, this article details the settings in the “Edit Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs” dialog newly added in Dorico Pro 6 and the greatly improved “Default Appearance of Chord Symbols in Projects” dialog.
[Table of Contents for Part 1]
- Music notation software and chord symbols
- Issues before Dorico Pro 5 and improvements in this update
- Three major updates related to chord symbols in Dorico Pro 6
- The order of use of each function when editing chord symbols
1. Decide the font
2. Settings in Engraving Options > Chord Symbols
[Table of Contents for Part 2]
- Additional information on the previous article
- The order of use of each function when editing chord symbols (continued)
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- Additional information on the previous article
First of all, I would like to talk about the newsI have found through research since publishing the previous article.
(1) Leave the music text font for chord symbols at the default setting of Bravura Text
In the previous article, I said “Use Finale Maestro as the Chord Symbols Music Text Font”, but it seems that the basic approach is to avoid this change and leave it at the default setting of Bravura Text. ※
※As mentioned in another article, Finale Maestro is a music font that was originally developed for Finale by MakeMusic, the developer of Finale, and has been included with Finale.
In fact, when I wrote the previous article, I was concerned that the accidentals on the root and tension of chord symbols did not look like the Finale Maestro glyphs, but also did not look like the Bravura glyphs.
If Finale Maestro was working properly, it should look like this. Here the difference in the shape of sharps and flats is clear.
After checking, I got to know that this was because the specifications of Finale Maestro, which was used as the Chord Symbols Music Text Font, did not match the specifications of Dorico.
Dorico’s basic spec is that it uses the dedicated symbols called the Standard accidentals for chord symbols for these accidentals, but according to Steinberg, Finale Maestro (Finale Maestro Text) does not have the dedicated accidentals for chord symbols that Dorico requires, so an alternative font is applied. ※
※See Steinberg's official Dorico forum “Chord Accidentals - Wrong font”.
Therefore, it is recommended that you do not change the Chord Symbols Music Text Font in Dorico to Finale Maestro from the default Bravura Text.
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(2) If you want to use a font other than Bravura for accidentals in chord symbols
If you still want to use a font other than Bravura for accidentals in chord symbols, you can set it by following the steps below.
[Example: How to change C# sharp’s font to the one in Finale Maestro Text]
First of all, do not change the style of the Chord Symbols Music Text Font, leave it as Bravura Text. (When you set it to Finale Maestro Text, you won't be able to see the symbol or modify it, because that font doesn't include all accidentals.)
Choose Library > Chord Symbols.
Type “C#” in the top left box, then click the “+” button to add the chord symbol to the list on the left, so it will appear in the list on the right.
Select the sharp accidental in the preview on the right.
Note that in the component row below the preview, one of the two sharp accidentals (the first for the full size accidentals, the second for the optical variant used at smaller sizes) is highlighted. To edit this component, click the pencil icon below the component row.
In the editor that appears, select “Standard accidentals (12-EDO)” from the SMuFL range list, and choose “Finale Maestro Text” from the Font drop-down list.
Now select “Sharp Accidentals” on the right and click “Add Glyph” to add it.
You'll notice that the Maestro sharps are much larger than the existing Bravura Text sharps. Set Scale to 50%. (If you like the placement of the sharps in Bravura Text, adjust the “Offset Y” value as well.)
Next, select the original Bravura Text sharps and click the “Delete” button to leave only the sharps in Finale Maestro Text.
Click “OK” to confirm the changes.
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(3) Specifications of Bravura Text for chord symbols
For example, Chaconne EX, a music font for domestically published scores in Japan, is equipped with standard accidentals for chord symbols, and when Chaconne EX is used as the Chord Symbols Music Text Font, there are no problems as seen in Finale Maestro, and chord symbol accidentals are displayed in Chaconne EX.
The current specifications for Bravura Text are a little complicated, and if the Chord Symbols Music Text Font is left as the default Bravura Text, the accidentals for altered tensions seem to be applied to the chord symbol-specific accidentals that also belong to Bravura Text.
As mentioned in step e. of “How to change C# sharp’s font to the one in Finale Maestro Text”, there are two types of accidentals for this chord symbol: “Full size accidentals” and “Optical variant used at smaller sizes”.
These are automatically switched by the numerical setting of “Engraving Options > Chord Symbols > Design > Scale factor for stacked alterations”. When this is below 75%, “Optical variant used at smaller sizes” is applied, and when it is above 76%, "Full size accidentals" is applied.
Due to the specifications of Bravura Text, it is unclear why the two differ not only in size but also in shape, but as described later, it is currently difficult to edit within the altered tension, so if you need to edit it, I suppose you would most likely need to wait for the next update.
By the way in the previous article, I said that “Superscript” should be selected for “Engraving Options > Chord Symbols > Chord Root > Vertical position of accidental for root note”, but it may be better to leave this as “Baseline” since this specification may cause differences in the shape of the glyph depending on the scale factor of the accidental attached to the root.
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- The order of use of each function when editing chord symbols (continued)
3. Chord symbol kerning pairs
Once you have completed the settings in “Engraving Options > Chord Symbols”, you should create a test file and actually enter all the chord symbols you want to edit. This will help you determine which chord symbols can be completed with just the Engraving Options settings, and which ones you will want to edit more by yourself.
Also, by actually entering the chord symbols on the staff, you can determine the kerning (balance of character spacing) for the font combination you selected in step “1”.
If you do not like the kerning, you can adjust the kerning in the “Edit Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs” dialog, a new feature in Dorico Pro 6, which can be opened by selecting the chord symbol in Engrave mode and double-clicking it or pressing the return key. ※
※The “Edit Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs” dialog can also be opened by going to “Library > Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs”.
This time, I’m using Arial as the chord symbol font, the same as the Japanese version of Finale v26/27. In this case, I feel that the default uniform kerning value of 0.750 set between the root and quality is a little too narrow, so it seems better to change it to roughly 1.000 to 1.300.
One thing to note when doing this is that the basic principle of kerning is that the amount of kerning required to achieve legibility varies depending on the combination of characters, so it is necessary to check the relationship between all roots and quality and apply kerning settings according to each combination of characters.
For example, for B♭ and A♭, changing the distance from the root to the flat (kerning amount) will make the chord symbol easier to read and more beautiful to look at.
Due to the specifications of Dorico's kerning function, the kerning amount manually set for Cm, for example, is not automatically reflected in different roots such as Dm and Em, so you will need to set the optimal kerning amount for them separately.
To make this task easier, the “Edit Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs” dialog has a button in the upper right corner to switch between root and quality, and a preview display in three different sizes just below the editing window in case the optimal kerning changes depending on the display size of the chord symbol.
It may be a bit of a hassle to check all the combinations at first, but kerning has a big impact on the final finish of the chord symbol, so it's worth taking your time and effort to set it properly. ※
※In Finale, you had to manually set kerning for one type of chord symbol individually, but in Dorico, the kerning set for a specific combination of characters is automatically applied to all other quality types that include that combination. With the convenient features of the “Edit Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs” dialog, such as the root and quality switching and three size previews, you can set kerning in various patterns much faster and more easily than in Finale.
Kerning is a basic technique in general character design, and experience and practice are required to set kerning that is easy for everyone to read.
There is a free web game app called KERNTYPE for this, so if you have never done kerning before, you might want to learn the basics with that and then try kerning chord symbols in Dorico.
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4. Adjust the appearance of chord symbols
Once you've finished adjusting the kerning, use the “Default Appearance of Chord Symbols in Projects” dialog, which you can open by selecting “Library > Chord Symbols”, to adjust the appearance of each type of chord symbol. *
※If you want to continuously adjust the appearance of multiple types of chord symbols, you'll likely open this dialog frequently, so it's a good idea to set a keyboard shortcut. I use option + shift + ⌘ + C on Mac, and alt + shift + ⌘ + C on Windows.
For example, let's look at the chord symbol Cm7♭5. As a result of the above-mentioned “2. Engraving Options > Chord Symbol Settings”, this chord symbol should look like this.
First of all, enter the chord you want to adjust the appearance of in the “Enter a chord symbol: ” field in the upper left of the “Project Default Chord Symbol Appearances” dialog.
For example, if you enter “Cm7b5” and click the + button immediately to the right, Cm7(♭5) will be displayed large on the center screen, and you can make the necessary adjustments here.
Chord symbols fit better into each measure if their width is saved as much as possible, so this time we should change the scale of the (♭5) part from the default setting of 65% to 50%, and move it from its original position at the right end to above the m7.
Basically, with this, you can apply this change to all roots by clicking the “Apply to All Roots” button at the bottom left, a new feature in Dorico Pro 6, and then clicking the OK button at the bottom right.
You could finish the process here, but if you set the vertical position of the root note's accidental to “superscript” in “Engraving Options > Chord Roots”, the accidental may become too small.
Therefore, we will increase the scale of the accidental from the default setting of 65% to 80%, and then change the Y offset from the default setting of 1.56 to 4.00 and move it up to balance it with the root.
Now, if you click “Apply to All Roots” and the OK button, the root accidental will be the appropriate size.
However, due to the specifications of Dorico Pro 6.0.10, which is the latest version at the time, this work seems to cause a problem that the baseline of the quality (suffix in Finale) shifts significantly upward when there is no accidental on the root, such as Cm7(♭5).
It seems that this needs to be corrected individually for the seven roots of CDEFGAB, but the correction work only involves returning the Y offset value, which is set to 4.00, to 0.00.
If you copy the chord quality text “m7b5” in advance and paste it immediately after entering the root in the upper left input field of the “Project Default Chord Symbol Appearances” dialog, you can avoid the trouble of entering the same chord quality over and over again, so the work should not take much time.
Once you have completed the correction work, you can review the kerning again if necessary, and finish it.
You can transfer these custom chord symbols to another project using the Library Manager.
Please note that in this case, you will need to import not only the chord symbol-related items but also the necessary items in the Engraving Options and Font Styles.
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5. Adjusting the appearance of individual chord symbols
If you want to adjust the appearance of an individual chord symbol for a specific situation, you can override the appearance of that particular chord symbol.
This is useful when placing four chord symbols in a small area of one measure, such as in a jazz slow ballad, and is a convenient feature unique to Dorico that was not available in Finale.
There are two ways to do this. First, in the Engrave Mode, right-click on the symbol to display the Project Default Chord Symbol Appearances dialog, and override the scaling of individual elements within the chord symbol.
In this case, you can, for example, keep the root size the same, but make only the tension parts smaller.
The other way is to select the symbol and use the custom scale in the Properties panel in the bottom panel to change the scaling of the entire chord symbol.
In this case, you cannot change the balance of the individual elements within the symbol, but you can make the whole symbols smaller at once, making it easy to make four chord symbols in a measure slightly smaller than the others.
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- Editing chord symbols with Dorico Elements, the simplified version of Pro
The Dorico Elements, the simplified version of Pro, does not have the Engraving Option, but it does have a submenu called “Chord Symbols” in the Library menu, which is almost the same as the “Engraving Options > Chord Symbols” in Dorico Pro.
Dorico Elements does not have the “Project Default Chord Symbol Appearances” dialog or the “Edit Chord Symbol Kerning Pairs” dialog.
Therefore, Dorico Elements basically only allows you to do up to as shown in the image below, and you cannot freely change the font type, size, or position of each component.
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- Expectations for further improvements in the future
In the previous article, I wrote that “Finale, which has the most flexible editing functions among music notation software, allowed users to freely edit the font type, size, or position of each component in a chord symbol to create an original chord symbol library”. But in reality, it required a lot of work.
Finale did not have a function to control the kerning of specific symbol pairs in a chord symbol globally, so it was necessary to identify the necessary symbol pair patterns and set everything manually.
In order to ensure consistency in the manual settings, some people may have managed the numerical values related to the size and placement of symbols in a spreadsheet when designing a chord suffix library.
Dorico's chord symbol editing function is particularly excellent in that it incorporates a function for systematically controlling kerning, which was lacking in Finale.
This makes it relatively easy to create a precise chord symbol library on par with Finale's, by managing only a few numbers of values.
The range of editable parts is currently somewhat narrower than in Finale. For example, the altered tension ♭9 is treated as a single glyph by default, so if you want to change the relative size or placement of the ♭ and 9, you need to delete the ♭9, enter the ♭ and 9 separately, and then rearrange them.
In the latest version of Dorico, Dorico Pro 6.0.10 which is released on May 26, 2025, it seems that this task is still not possible in some cases, so for now it seems safe to use altered tensions such as ♭9, #9, #11, and ♭13 as they are, without breaking them down and editing the size balance and kerning of the individual symbols.
In Dorico Pro6.0.10, there are other issues where kerning does not work in some cases, or symbols cannot be placed as expected.
However, the design is such that editing chord symbols is easier and faster than in Finale, so if these issues can be resolved, I think it will be a much easier feature to use.
According to Steinberg, for example, they plan to make it possible to disassemble and edit the previously mentioned altered tensions like ♭9 in the future. I hope that this and other improvements to the chord symbol editing feature will be made in future updates.
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(I received a great deal of help from members of the official Steinberg Dorico forums in the verification and research that formed the basis of this article. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to these people.)
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