Hi,
in our band, almost all musicians sing. The woodwind players alternate with singing, the guitar players sing while playing.
I’m looking for a way to group instruments by player so that they receive clean, automatically sorted parts with instrument change warnings WHILE having a vocal staff block in the full score, ideally condensed.
I haven’t found a way to achieve both, mostly because Dorico doesn’t allow me to move two instruments belonging to the same player apart in the full score.
I ask for advice, so far I’ve spent on this about 10 hours.
I prepared an example project with a setup that may solve your needs. Please study the attached Dorico project, (select the groups/players and see in which layout they are checked, select the layouts and see which players are checked), and please ask if you have any question.
You see a Fulls Score, with separated voice staves (I set custom player order in Layout options>Players).
Then the first three parts layouts have 2 player each one (instrument and voice) so they show two staves.
For an alternative visualisation, I created then duplicate players that hold a voice instrument, copied all the music into them, unchecked them from the Full Score, and used them to generate the flute and clarinet parts (the last two layouts) with instrument changes (since guitar doesn’t need it, because sings and plays simultaneously).
Or an alternate way might be to put cues from the choir into the instruments instead of adding the vocal parts as extra players to each instrument. This won’t give you the automatic instrument change warnings, but might (depending on the music) be easier to deal with anyway. Particularly if several people sing the same part, as you won’t need to copy the music around. (I wouldn’t think switching between instrument and song needs the same warning as switching instruments anyway. I can hold my clarinet while I sing.)
Thank you both for your helpful replies. It is surprising that this isn’t a native feature, but instead requires workarounds. I can’t be the first composer facing this exact issue.
@Christian_R Thank you for the project file, I went through it. Are the groups necessary, or are they just for clarity?
Since we’re going for separate players, I have this beautiful specimen of a person who alternates between a talharp (our medieval equivalent of an electric guitar, he plays it over the shoulder) and shaman drum all the while singing.
My proposed solution would be 1 player with both instruments and a separate vocal player, so that a full score condenses the string part with the drum part (+ the score checks if there’s enough time for an instrument switch).
Does this make sense to you?
@Rikard Thank you for your suggestion. If I want to go that way, my regular cues would probably break, no?
The groups (especially the third one) avoid the automatic numbering of the instruments (there are 2 flutes and 2 clarinets). You can switch off the group labels in Layout options if you don’t want to see them.
It makes sense if you obtain the desired look in both Full Score and the Part. Choose whatever method gives you the desired result.
Yes. Unless I’m missing something there is no way to adjust the note sizes of individual cues so if you want the vocals full size and other cues at the standard 3/4 then this method won’t work. If you’re cueing in the vocals, they’ll have to be cue size, or all cues will have to be full size.
Ah! Good. I only tried to change the scale of the cues themselves (in write mode) and that did nothing. Then this is another way that the desired result could be accomplished. Which way is easier probably depends on the circumstances.
(I have learned two things today through this experiment: That cue notes can be resized, and that there is a setting that automatically puts a “Play” label at the end of cues.)
So far, I’ve found that I have to resize them the cue notes manually, because the Filter > Cues function doesn’t select anything.
I’ve decided to go with separate players for vocal staves. I’m about 80% happy with this solution. Hope that there’s native functionality that enables or simplifies this in the next major version.
