Closed voicing -> drop 2? ("rotate" notes, "super swap")

Dorico
1

I have four instruments, where I’ve written parts in closed voicing. Now I want to convert it to drop 2.

  1. Select the second line, cut it
  2. Select the third and fourth lines, and move to staff above
  3. Paste into the now-empty fourth line, and move it down an octave

I found the “paste special->swap” function. I’m wondering if there’s a similar function to “rotate” selected notes, so the top-most line gets moved to the bottom line. Basically, automating everything except for the octave shift.

2

No, there’s no way to rotate notes around between more than two staves, but it’s an interesting idea and one we’ll have a think about for the future.

3

Okay, thank you :slight_smile:

4

On a regular basis issues pop up on this forum that are often easily accomplished using the competition. In the fullness of time I’m sure Dorico will provide native solutions for most of these cases, but in the meantime, if at all possible, use the competition for what it’s worth, and rely on Dorico’s already EXCELLENT MusicXML import functionality to get the results back into Dorico. (In the present case I’d check out Mr. Jari Williamson’s Staff Polyphony plugin…)

5

pat_ runs Sibelius but has never mentioned Finale. Has Mr. Williamson written some plugins for Sibelius that I’m not aware of?

6

Incidentally, my method for doing this within Dorico is to write my chords on one stave (using a MIDI keyboard, though the Shift+I popover is useful too), then fix the voicing with the help of the note Filters. Then when the voicing’s correct (and articulation is in place etc.) I use the Paste Special > Explode function.

I can’t think of any method within Sibelius that’s quicker than that, and though I own the most recent version of Finale I’m way too slow with every other aspect of Finale to pursue the JW plugins.

7

It was meant as a general observation, and I didn’t notice any reference to Sibelius here. But AFAIK Mr. Williamson wouldn’t dream of touching Sibelius … :smiley:

8

I get what you’re saying… clearly there will be a threshold of difficulty to consider when choosing applications. In this case, doing the steps I showed in my first post is a lot easier than switching to another program, retyping everything, running a script, exporting to MusicXML, importing to Dorico, etc :slight_smile:

I really like Dorico for writing. It still does the job better than the competition, in my experience.

That works well for homorhythmic parts, and where I don’t care to navigate the individual lines. And when I use multiple voices, I’m unable to navigate across a single voice smoothly (it often jumps from one voice to another – I think this is well-documented and will be addressed in the future).

I did experiment quite a bit with reducing and re-exploding, which turned out to be more trouble than it’s worth if there are multiple rhythms.

Anyway, thanks for weighing in. For now, my cut-and-paste deal does the trick.