Condensing score from divisi staves

Hello, and thank you to all who contributed to my earlier question about how to create divisi staves from existing voice 1 and 2. I did as was suggested, and now I’d like to make a conductor’s score that has the divisi string parts appear on a single staff. When I tried the “condense” procedure, nothing seemed to happen. Then when I went out on the web, I think I read that it’s not possible to re-condense if I haven’t started out with Violin 1a and Violin 1b as two separate staves from the get-go? Am I understanding this correctly? Trying to create a conductor’s score. Thank you for your help!

Hi Steve, by default only solo players are condensed, but provided you have Dorico 3.5 you can tell Dorico to condense section players and divisi as well. See here (especially steps 5-6).

Your set options for condensing will still apply, though - so e.g. if in a single phrase (“notes between rests”) the lower divisi staff has a higher note than the upper divisi staff, that goes over the pitch crossing threshold set by default so the staves won’t condense. More info about the options here, the things that Dorico looks at when deciding on what/how to condense here, and some explanations of different condensing results here.

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Thank you so much for your reply Lillie… I suppose what I really wanted wasn’t so much a condensed staff as for both voices to appear on the same staff. So, to repeat, here’s what I had done:

  1. I made a violin 1 section staff. I wrote unison for most bars, and then at a certain point, I wrote divisi, using up-stem and down-stem voices.
  2. In the parts, I created divisi staves at the point where the divisi started. I then filtered and copied (Ctrl-M) the down-stem voice to the second divisi staff. The parts now look perfect.
  3. Now I want a conductor’s score that shows ONLY the original staff, with both voices of divisi on it. I’d thought for some reason that when I did “condense” that somehow that would occur. But maybe because I did it in voices, it can’t?

The important thing is that I actually DON’T need the two voices to “condense” (meaning both voices appearing on the same stem). Having up- and down-stem would be fine, as I originally wrote it.

“Condensing” in Dorico means showing the music of 2+ instruments or staves on fewer staves than normal. That can mean in a single voice on the condensed staff, or multiple voices on the condensed staff. It’s really down to the requirements of the material on a per-phrase and per-system basis, and/or what you want.

You can override the automatic condensing result by either changing the notation options for the flow, or using manual condensing. Here is also the introduction to condensing for your reference.

Okay, for some reason I’m not able to make all of that work, but thank you Lillie, I’ll continue to study it!

In the meantime, I’ve created a new “Violin 1” staff, and now I need to copy from different voices/staves, onto one staff. NOT condensed, I want to the voices to be separate, with different stems, but on one staff. Is there a way to combine separate voices (located on separate staves) onto one staff in different voices? Right now when I highlight both source staves (each in a different voice) only the top up-stem voice 1 part gets copied onto the target staff. (In Finale, I used to copy one voice/layer, then I’d 'hide" the layer, and copy the second voice/layer, and then un-hide the first, and both would then appear).

Sorry for the complexity, and thank you for your help!

Yes. I suggest you explore edit-> paste special. There you can easily paste into a specific voice. (You may also find paste special-> reduce useful)

Just to restate again: „condensed“ in Dorico doesn’t have to mean, that music shares the same voices.
You can have two instruments on the same staff with separate voices, and Dorico nonetheless calls it „condensed“, because in Dorico everything that comes from separate staves and is put into one staff is considered „condensed“.

From what I read I still think the condensing feature (respecting different voices) would be the way to go, but if not, follow @Janus advice above.

If you want to share an extract of the project here, someone would probably be happy to take a look and set it up as you want - Violin divisi appearing on separate staves in the part layout for clarity, but on one staff with 2 voices in the full score.