Hello,
In the following attachment, the first horn has a green colour, but the upper voices on other staves have a red colour as the clarinet part.
The order of voice colours doesn’t correspond to voice numbers; it corresponds to the order in which voices were added.
Yes, you are right.
At least, the order of colour appearance is consistent: blue, red, light green 1, purple 1, orange 1, cyan, purple 2, light green 2, etc.
The following colours make the readability of note worse: the third, fifth, sixth and eighth colours.
I prefer to correlate colours and voice, but it probably because of the long use of Finale.
I am curious about what other people think about the correlation between voices and colours.
If I am understanding this thread, I for one would prefer that colors stayed consistent within voices, with order of entry having nothing to do with it.
When composing, why would I care to be kept aware of whatever order I entered the voices? I would definitely care to know by color what voice I am looking at. If course after composing it would seem best for me to discontinue displaying colors in favor of a consistent black.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding things…
We’ve been through this before, here: Steinberg Forums
The complication is always going to be grand-staff instruments. Though both staves in a grand-staff have separate voice numbering, they share one colour palette. This differs from both Sibelius and Finale, I think. This is to make cross-staffing easier (both for the user and for the software). There’s thus always going to be inconsistency between voice numbers and colors if you’re working with some one-staff instruments and some grand-staff instruments.
Also differing from both Sibelius and Finale, Dorico can create an unlimited number of voices. Generally speaking, it doesn’t matter what voice you’ve ended up with as long as you know whether it’s upstem or downstem.
When independent voice routing (for playback) appears, it may be more relevant to know what voice you’re working with. Until that happens, I don’t see any point in pestering the team to waste time “fixing” something that already works. No, it doesn’t work the same way as in Finale, but equally it doesn’t work the same way as in Sibelius.
Bear in mind that Dorico’s development team worked on Sibelius for years - if they’ve done something differently, it’s because they’ve already spent months or years thinking it through, and they think their way is better.
I think it comes down to “what do you actually want to do in Dorico which needs that information?”
The way Sibelius and Finale use voices, you need to be aware of which notes are in which voice, because the “rules” for collision detection between notes are different for different combinations of voices. In Dorico, that doesn’t matter, so long as the stems are in the right direction.
I find that most of the time it’s “obvious” which voice to use to add more notes to a staff, and therefore it’s equally “obvious” what I did for the notes I already entered. The only exception is if you have some complicated notation which really needs 3 or 4 voices on the same staff and even then it’s usually clear which are the “main” voices (used everywhere) and which are the “extra” ones (used to solve some local notation problem).
You can always find what voice a note is in by selecting it and starting note entry. If you want to add more notes to the same voice as something already in the score, that is usually all you need to know, in the situations (relatively rare in my experience) where you can’t remember which voice you used for something.
After knowing the colour sequence, I have been almost satisfied with this Feature in Dorico, but I still think that it would be better to have coincided relationship between colours and voice number.
Anyway, I mostly use only the first and second colour.
However, there are sometimes voices which are out of control (often on grand staves, rarely on single staves), then I see other colours.
For me, the following colours are dazzling, so it is hard to concentrate on work: the third, fifth, sixth and eighth colours.
Customising the voice colours in preference would also be great.
We have no current plans to change the way colours are assigned to voices. Furthermore, if you’re using six or eight voices, you are either writing some of the most complex music ever written, or (I suspect) you’re abusing Dorico’s capability to provide an unlimited number of voices per instrument. In even the most complex keyboard and guitar music, requiring more than three voices is almost unheard of, and even three voices is exceptional rather than normal. Make sure you are using V to cycle between voices once you have created them, rather than constantly typing Shift+V to start a new voice.
Make sure you are using V to cycle between voices once you have created them, rather than constantly typing Shift+V to start a new voice.
Thank you. This is a good tip!
Mostly, I use only one voice or two voices simultaneously. Three voices are quite maximum.
The voice problems I had occurred by copying/duplicating/moving notes from other staves.
It seems that “Reduce” the notes produced by “Explode” causes this. By using “Paste special\Paste voice”, I do not see more the problem.
You can use a very fast workflow to change voices :
Select the notes
Right-click to open the context menu
Press v c
Enter to make it upsem voice one or use the down arrow to select another voice then enter.
Very fast. Courtesy of Pianoleo
Ah, thank you!
