Dear Dorico friends,
I have a task where I need to set divisi and unisono in an existing score. I know how to create divisi and how to return to unison.
What I’m struggling with is this: how can I make Dorico write these double notes on one staff instead of two separate staves when condensing? There are many situations where the difference between the two parts is only one or two notes. In those cases, I don’t want Dorico to show two “unison” staves.
Do I have to handle this manually, or is there a setting for this?
Thank you, I did..But still cannot understand why Dorico doesn’t write just one single Voice on the begining. Divisi (just single note) comes on a second line..
Because you told Dorico that the divisi started in bar 1, according to the signpost in your screenshot. So bars 5-8 are divided violins playing the same notes, which is what Dorico has notated; this is not exactly the same thing as unison violins.
I would:
Delete the notes in the lower staff from the beginning through the G on beat 2 of bar 8
In Write mode, cut (Ctrl/Cmd+X) the Divisi signpost and paste it on A half note on beat 2 of bar 8
This will give you single stems until the half note, which gets a double stem because even though the two divisions are playing the same note, it’s tied to different notes on the next beat.
I did it, but I still don’t understand why Dorico labels each stave with div. or unis. instead of writing it only at the points where it actually changes. I would expect Dorico to write unis. on the second note in the second stave, and not write it again on the third stave.
You never told Dorico that you were going back to unison. Delete any notes in the lower staff from bar 15 to bar 27, then right click on bar 15 and choose Staff > Restore Unison. Then right-click on bar 27 and choose Staff > Change Divisi. (And restore unison again at R3.)
Dorico does not analyze your musical content to determine whether or not the line is divided; it only looks at your explicit instructions. So right now Dorico thinks the whole thing from m.9 is for divided violins, and it labels the beginning of each staff to make it clear that the divided violins are playing the same notes.
In general, when you have a divisi part, you’re going to be inserting a bunch of Change Divisi and Restore Unison instructions, as appropriate. Note that you probably don’t want to do this every time things change – for example, restoring the unison for beat 2 in bar 9 and then adding divisi on beat 4 doesn’t really make sense – the current notation with double stems on beat 2 is perfectly correct (the violins are divided for those two bars but happen to play that one note together).
Thank you so much. Please help me understand the correct workflow.
I have a part where, in some places, there is divisi and then unis.
Do I not need to create a second divisi line, copy/paste the same music, and then change both to first or second voice?
Instead, should I work with a single staff, and at each relevant position use Change Divisi and then Restore to Unis?
And will Dorico handle this automatically?
In general, this is what you want to do. When the line is actually divided (i.e., different notes for a passage), you add a Change Divisi, then Restore Unison when the divided passage is done.
I say “in general” because there will be exceptions. As I indicated above, you wouldn’t normally restore unison for just a couple of notes in the middle of a divided passage. There are also times when you move those signposts around in order to get a particular condensing result.
In bar 9, as I said, you do not want to restore the unison – just duplicate the note in the 2 staves. And you probably have 2 staves because you continue to have notes in the lower staff even after you restored the unison.
Can you upload your Dorico project file here so I can take a look? It’s easier working with the file than guessing from screenshots.
The forum won’t let you upload files bigger than 4MB. You can make files smaller by applying the Silence playback template and then saving as a copy. In a case like this, you can also delete all players except for the violin player.
I don’t think there’s an automatic way to get Dorico not to print div. at the start of the second system, as a reminder that the part is divided there, but you can select that label in Engrave mode and turn on Hide in the lower Properties panel.
One other thing: as @kiwimusic suggests, if you have a violin part that’s mostly unison, with just a few divided homophonic sections, it’s often easier to write those sections by hand (two voices on one staff) rather than get into Dorico’s divisi mechanism.
Thank you very much for your example. I see now that my expectations of Dorico’s condensing for strings were probably too high.
In the past, when working with “other program”, my workflow was mostly manual: I marked div. and unis. by hand and kept everything on one staff as long as it was readable, only splitting into two staves when necessary. I expected that in Dorico it would be enough to mark the exact points where players divide or merge again, and that Dorico would then intelligently keep everything on one staff unless separate staves were really needed.
Instead, when using condensing, I often end up with two unnecessary staves in a part, both showing the same notes (apparently waiting for the next divisi passage), and I don’t seem to have control over this. In your example it worked well, but after I changed the music later, I couldn’t achieve the same result again.
Additionally, repeated div. markings at the start of a new system are quite disturbing. I know they can be hidden, but I don’t really understand why they are there..
@JohnBarron, I’ve watched your tutorials very carefully and found them extremely helpful. They explain well how a score can be condensed. I would love to see a tutorial focused specifically on an optimal workflow for condensing string parts: keeping them simple, not overcrowded, and clearly controlling when divisi appears on one staff versus two (or more). Most likely, I’m just missing something….
In general, that’s how Dorico works, and what I did. But “marking” in this case doesn’t mean adding text to indicate div/unis – it means using the Dorico function to Change Divisi or Restore Unison.
The important thing to keep in mind here is that Dorico will only switch between one and two staves at the beginning of a system. So if the actual divisi point is the third bar of a system, Dorico gives you two staves for the entire system and duplicates the music in the first two bars accordingly. This is entirely reasonable and is how many orchestral parts are engraved. If it bothers you, then you need to use system breaks to explicitly arrange for changes of divisi to happen at the beginning of systems.
Edit: If you can post a picture of a different result that you were looking for, someone can show you how to get it in Dorico.
Well, I get why they’re there – to clarify what’s going on in that system – but I also think they’re often not needed and wish we had more control over when they appear.
Yes, sorry — by “marking” I meant exactly what you described: using Change Divisi and Restore Unison.
What confuses me is the following behavior in the score: when I use Change Divisi, both lines suddenly appear on one staff, but when I use Restore Unison, Dorico creates two staves again — exactly the opposite of what I would expect. Correct me please what I did wrong.
I am attaching a score containing only Violin I, using the Silence Playback template, as you suggested, to keep the file size small.
Of course, I could fall back on the old Sibelius-style workflow: writing separate voices or intervals and adding div. / *unis.*text manually.
However, I expect Dorico to be the next step in notation software. As a conductor who has worked with a lot of scores and parts, I am quite sensitive to readability and to avoiding unnecessary space or page turns.
My expectation was that Dorico would keep one staff whenever possible, mark only the specific notes as div., and then automatically switch back to unis. as soon as the music returns to unison — instead of duplicating almost identical material on two staves.
It occurs to me that one issue might be that you’ve been working in Page view. When you’re writing for divisi, it’s always better to work in Galley view, where everything is clearer, and then switch to Page view to check the effects of condensing.
Here’s what Galley view looks like for your violin part:
You added a Change Divisi instruction, but then you continued to write both sets of notes in one staff. This is how you would write things if, for example, the first division were playing double stops in octaves and the second division had rests. What you really want is this:
Note that I’ve removed the Unis marking in the middle of this phrase – as I said before, there is no advantage to changing to unison for a single note. I’ve also made sure that the dynamics and slurs are the same in the two lines, to allow Dorico to condense properly.
The other reason that things weren’t condensing properly for you is that you hadn’t enabled condensing in this layout. You need to have these settings, in Layout Options > Players > Condensing:
So while the violins are not divided, you just write on the single violin line. At the point that they divide, add a Change Divisi, and Dorico will give you a second staff (in Galley view). Write on each staff what that division should be playing, and then Dorico’s condensing will figure out the appropriate way to put them on one staff, if possible.
No. Your use of divisi and condensing in Dorico is plain wrong (because you are thinking of old methods).
Dorico’s ability to condense divisi is (IMO) nothing short of of remarkable. (Yes, there are issues around labelling).
My advice is to work in galley (or fill) view and give the notes to the divisions that you want to play them.
If you have imported an xml from elsewhere, you can use filter to select notes and alt-M to move them to the appropriate staff. Once everything is on the correct staff you can move bars between systems to optimise layouts.
Thank you very much for your great patience and explanations. What I had completely overlooked was the small option to check “Enable condensing” in the Layout Options. I had only selected “Condense divisi”, which is why I couldn’t understand why the results were different.
