Hi. I’m new to Dorico and have been trying to educate myself enough to start working on an arranging project for SSAA barbershop. There are lots of things to tackle, but the immediate question is whether to build this as individual staves for each of the four voices and then condense into two shared staves (Tenor Lead) (Bari Bass) or build it on two staves with two voices per staff. I’ve read pros and cons for both. Working in voices seems cumbersome at the moment (until I get used to it, perhaps), but I’ve read that condensing has some issues when applying lyrics. So I’m asking for some opinions about the most efficient way to approach this type of writing in version 6.0, and then I’ll focus my efforts on learning the needed skills. Thanks for your help! Looking forward to getting into this, but want to get off on the right foot.
Welcome to the forum, @mowblick. From my limited understanding, barbershop music is only ever printed in the two-stave format, meaning that there is only ever one layout to be concerned with. The main advantages of condensing are that you can change the staff allocation for individual parts and also print them in different layouts, but you probably don’t need that here and indeed the lyrics may also cause trouble. Using two voices per staff gives you a lot more direct control over the printed result, and once you know the intricacies of the caret it shouldn’t be that cumbersome even as a novice.
Thank you @hrnbouma. Yes, typically barbershop is always only two staves (sometimes the voices are shown broken apart if there are polyrhythms happening that would be too complex visually to interpret if the voices are shown grouped. But generally there are only two staves. The tricky part is not only positioning of lyrics, but making sure the stems are going the right way for each voice. I’m hoping as I get into using Dorico voices, I’ll be able to force the stem directions as I’m working, or be able to select the entire voice and then force the stems after the notes are entered. But I appreciate your advice on this. I think I’ll work on this approach and just get used to doing what I need to do. Cheers!
Have you looked at the Barbership template that comes with Dorico 6? Look in the Hub under Create New > Choral, or do File > New From Project Template > Choral > Barbershop quartet.
It looks like this template uses just two staves, uncondensed, so you should write in two voices on each staff.
From the Dorico 6 release notes:
More on inputting into different voices:
Thank you, @asherber! Yes, just yesterday I noticed that there’s been an updated template for barbershop included in version 6. I took quick look and I will have to change the clefs to the appropriate ones for women’s barbershop, but other than that, it looks like a good update and I’ll be using that for sure. I know you have to tweak around a little to get the right playback range for a “bass: octave above” clef in the lower staff. I may have already figured this out a while back and have now forgotten. But all the input here makes me think I’m headed down the right path with this, and as with all software learning, I’ll be looking things up constantly. I’m grateful that Dorico has such thorough, searchable documentation. Thank you for your reply and the links.
I’m a choral conductor, and I occasionally perform barbershop arrangements. My sense is that the condensed notation has historical roots, going back to the nineteenth century, when paper was expensive. Today there’s really no need for that anymore: four staves are simply much easier to read, especially when voices cross.
I would strongly recommend working with Voices, rather than Condensing.
They are very straightforward to use: just press Shift V to create a new voice, and then press V to switch to that voice. This even works for a selection, so you can enter notes as chords in one voice, then select the bottom note (I have a jump bar command set up for this), and press V to move those notes to the lower voice.
It’s much easier to edit voices than condensed staves, too.
Interesting, @tijs…hadn’t really though about why barbershop notation is the way it is. And I agree that it can be easier to read and learn one’s part when shown on it’s own staff. But oddly, at least in my chorus, there seems to be some resistance to the more open format. Perhaps it’s because the singers don’t want all those extra pages. Many members are still using paper and binders (I prefer iPad and forScore) so that could be a reason. Also, I think in the barbershop world it’s about tradition more than convenience or practicality. That’s what people are used to in the artform and it remains unchanged after all these years. I might also note that sometimes it can be helpful to see the intervals formed by the voices closer together. Chords being the primary focus of barbershop, I think the singers prefer to clearly see the interval relationships just as much as focusing on their own melodic lines.
Thank you! I’m about to go review the videos about “voices”. 
Barbershop arranger here. The best practice (and by far the easier approach) is two staves and using up-stem and down-stem voices in each staff. Version 6 has a two-staff barbershop template that uses the TTBB clefs - Changing the clefs to the SSAA ones is easy. Let me know if I can help. I’ve put together a Google Drive with barbershop templates for all the voicings. Feel free to download and use: