How to combine unison choir voices into on stave in Dorico Pro 5.
I have an SATB choir arrangement. Verse one is unison for both the male and female voices. How do I combine the Soprano and Alto voices into an SA only stave and the Tenor and Bass voices into a TB only stave in Dorico Pro 5 on a Mac?
Pictured below, I’d like the results to go from what is seen in the top picture to what is seen in the bottom picture.
I recommend staying away from vocal condensing at present. It does work, but there are a few situations in which it’s still a little limiting. Better option is to select the first note in the alto, Select More to select all alto notes, then Copy and Right-click>Paste Special>Paste into New Downstem Voice 1 in the soprano staff.
Is this something Dorico hasn’t worked on fully yet, as in it is in the works for a software update?
Daniel has said there is more refinement to be done, yes.
You could also use the Reduce function.
You could a separate Choir reduction instrument, and then hide the ‘empty’ other staves, as one might in Finale.
Or just use the existing Soprano and Bass staves with appropriate labelling, as Dan suggests.
I imagine people are referring to the issue mentioned in this thread:
I’m referring to condensing unison sections of my piece. For example, in my SATB arrangement, the Soprano/Alto and Tenor/Bass sing unison for verse one, then after the interlude, only the soprano and altos sing unison for verse two. In essence, it makes no sense to have four staves of music for SATB singing the same exact notes and words where only two staves of music will suffice; just like in verse two where only the SA are singing the same parts and words, it makes no sense to have an extra stave of notes and words for the Altos, and two empty staves of music where the tenor and bass is silent.
Please see my reply to mducharme. Creating a reduction isn’t really what I’m aiming for at this point.
The Reduce function might be useful if you’ve already got the music written out on more staves than you ultimately want; it isn’t solely for “creating a piano reduction”. It’s essentially a “copy and paste but squish it” command.
In your situation, it sounds like a practical approach could be to set up two section players (one for SA, one for TB) that you can then divide onto separate staves as and when needed.
You can also hide empty staves, eg for those sections where the lower voices aren’t singing at all.
I’ve found the divisi function helpful when needing both closed and open SATB staves.
In this sample, I built the choir using two staves and applied divisi when four staves were more appropriate.
The screenshots show both page and galley views. I’m not sure if my method is the best, most semantic was to approach this, but it’s worked well!
Hopefully the provided picture illustrates what I’m looking to do. The soprano and alto voices sing unison for about 18 measures. The same goes for the Tenor and Bass voices. I’d like to have an SA stave and a TB stave for those 18 measures only. Does this picture help illustrate better what I’m looking for?
Yes, this is extremely common in anthems, of course. I can think of a few ways to do this in Dorico, but what is the recommended method?
In Finale you can custom-label the staves any way you want, per-system. In Sibelius I copied many such pieces, using the S & B staves for the unison parts. Sometimes I hid the staff labels on the left and just marked entrances above each staff. Other times I changed the staff labeling itself by invisibly changing the instrument on the staff before the next system. Often I dealt with texture changes mid-system, which required some labeled arrows.
Ostensibly you could accomplish this with Condensing Changes, I think.
Yes, this would work well with divisi changes. You can customize what gets shown in staff labels for each divisi change, which would allow you to switch from SA / TB to S/A/T/B.
Set up a project and have a play around to get a feel for it 
I’ve been trying out condensing with vocal scores and the principle is great; but there are still a few bugs that make it not quite ready for prime time.
When the condensing of vocal scores is fixed in a future update I think it will be a great approach to this of thing.
I was able to get it all situated. I had to get creative to get it the way I wanted it.
Hello Lillie. I have started a new empty project. I have added the organ as a solo instrument. I’m still a little stuck on the steps to add two section players (one for SA and one for TB). I tried doing it with the add ensemble function in setup mode but didn’t see an option for adding two section players. 
Here are instructions for adding players:
Here’s information about the ensemble picker, including how to change the type of players in it:
