Choral templates - barbershop harmony

Long time Finale user, just starting with Dorico Pro/Dorico for iPad. I arrange barbershop harmony. GREAT that you have a Barbershop Harmony template; however, it’s not set up correctly. Barbershop uses two staves not four, and the clefs are specific to men’s or women’s arrangements. Men’s barbershop uses octave down treble clef and regular bass clef. Women’s barbershop uses regular treble clef and octave up bass clef . In both cases, the treble clef is for tenor part (stems up) and lead (stems down). Bass clef is for baritone (stems up) and bass (stems down). Mixed barbershop (men/women together) is becoming more popular - it uses two staves and regular bass and treble clef.

It’s been a while since this one came up, but the last time it did (Suggestion - Barbershop Template) Daniel made the point that what really ought to happen is that you write music on four staves and Dorico then condenses it down to two automatically.

In the past few years Condensing functionality has come to Dorico - and this is exactly how you’d notate e.g. two flutes on a single staff in the score, but with separate Flute 1 and Flute 2 part layouts - but (IMO) it’s not yet really suitable for vocal music - there are complications where lyrics are concerned - and it’s Pro-only functionality so doesn’t appear on the iPad.

If you wanted to put four voices across two staves manually, that’s easy enough, but where you need lyrics above and below each stave that’s currently difficult on iPad (though probably easier with a Bluetooth keyboard attached).

Fair enough - but the clefs still have to be the right ones and I did not see the octave up bass clef as a choice (on iPad). This is standard in women’s barbershop. Please add the octave up bass clef to the available clefs.

Carole

You mean this one?

image

Type f8va into the clef popover.

EDIT: reading is hard in the morning… you said “on the iPad,” but I haven’t played around enough with it to know what’s possible on iPad yet. If it isn’t, you could create it in Dorico SE on the desktop, then import.

Yes that’s the one.
I said “On the iPad” because that’s all I’ve viewed so far. I’ve downloaded the trial of Pro but haven’t looked at it yet.

These clefs are Pro-only, as per the popovers documentation: https://steinberg.help/dorico/v3/extra/dorico-3.5.10-popovers.pdf

(@Carole_Prietto, I’m only giving information on how things currently work. I don’t work for Steinberg and have no control over decisions they make regarding available clefs or anything else.)

I always recommend purchasing Pro at some point, but in the short term, you could easily use your trial to create a blank file with these staves set up exactly as you wanted, and then use it on the iPad freely.

That clef ought to be accessible at the intermediate levels, and (FWIW) I’m going to request it. They may ignore me but it’s worth a try. Why is there octave down treble clef but not octave up bass clef? Makes no sense to me.

There really wasn’t a need to start a new thread. You already asked, and people from the development team really do read every post on every thread, even if they don’t respond immediately.

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It’s now a year later(!), and I’ve completely switched from Finale - bought Pro, and just bought the lifetime unlock for iPad. Dorico for iPad is a terrific app and has turned my long subway commute into productive arranging time! I’ve developed templates for barbershop harmony (SSAA/women and TTTBB/men) based on guidelines from the Barbershop Harmony Society. They’re attached, for anyone who is interested. Barbershoppers much prefer two staves with up-stem and down-stem voices, rather than 4 staves.

barbershop_ssaa_template.dorico (599.1 KB)
barbershop_ttbb_template.dorico (619.1 KB)

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