New adventure - I’m arranging a piece for hand chimes.
Background context: chimes are similar to handbells, but with purer sound so you don’t have to worry about clashing harmonics. A two-handed player can play two chimes simultaneously. They can also use more than two chimes in a piece, as long as they have time in between to put one down and pick the next one up. Each different piece would share out the chimes differently depending on the constraints of the piece, so that nobody has an impossible combination to play.
In our group, a part for one player would have one conventional music stave with all that person’s notes for the piece, or possibly a pair of staves like a piano if some chimes were high and some low. They wouldn’t see the other people’s notes (unless in an occasional cue).
So far, my method has been to put the piece into Dorico in an ordinary kind of way, then copy each pitch (each chime) onto a separate stave, then think about which ones to group together for one player.
Practical questions arising:
- I’ve been doing the initial split using (a) select one note, (b) select to end of flow, (c) filter note by pitch (which by default offers me the first note I’d selected), (d) copy that selection of notes onto an empty stave labelled for that chime. (a) and (d) are pretty quick, but (b) and (c) I’m currently doing via menus, which makes them a bit tedious.
Is there a quicker way?
For example, can I have a shortcut so that when I click on a particular note, it’s only one key-command to then select every other same-pitch note on that stave? Or, better still, is there an “explode” which would spread all the notes instantly across staves, one pitch per stave?
- When I come to group the chimes for players, is there an additive option (ideally nondestructive/reversible, as when making a condensed score) where I can just say like: “these three staves, now make all their notes display on one stave, no need to tag which is which”?
Or is the simplest way just to copy each pitch manually onto another stave to assemble the multiple chime lines and make that person’s part? And if so, tips welcome for speeding that up.
(I’ve experimented with “Condensing”, and so far that isn’t giving me what I want - which doesn’t surprise me, because I realise this isn’t what it’s actually for 
)
- In MIDI, I’m aware that there are two different conventions about which octave is which: e.g. the same pitch in one system would be C4, and in the other, C5.
Now unless I am mistaken,
- In my copy of Dorico at present, G above middle C is called G4.
- On the chimes, which are from Malmark, G above middle C is called G5.
a) Is that likely to be because of the two different conventions… or is it implausible and possibly caused by me being somehow in a muddle
b) If it’s due to the two different conventions, is there a way to tell Dorico to use Malmark’s convention while I’m working on chimes? or do I just have to be always making that adjustment in my head as I go along?
(although I suppose I shall end up memorising the octave names pretty soon if I do more chime pieces, and then it won’t matter what Dorico tells me they are )
Thanks in advance for any workflow-tips for this relatively unusual situation