Distributing string section players on a specific chord

Hello hello,

By default, a string section is supposed to play divisi by distributing its players evenly on each line, but the orchestrator may occasionaly wish to assign a specific number of players to a certain chord or line. This is fairly common in orchestral film scores.

The number of players is usually indicated in brackets before the note, like in “Early Days” from “Born on the 4th of July” by John Williams (engraved in MuseScore):

In bar 3, the Violin II section is expected to suddenly divide its players by allowing 6 of them to the higher note, 4 to the middle note and 4 again to the lower note, until otherwise specified. In case any of the section’s players were to be excluded, this could also be indicated (e.g. “5 desks”), or left to the discretion of the conductor, concertmaster or common sense as is the case in bar 4 where sub-section 1 is momentarily missing without notice.

I could be wrong, but I haven’t found anything useful about this in the documentation, YT channel or the forum. Creating a divisi seems the way to go, but the “Change Divisi” dialog doesn’t appear to allow the user to assign a number of players per sub-section, only their names.

Idea #1: We could take advantage of this by naming the 3 sub-sections “(6)”, “(4)”, “(4)” and arrange the position of these names in Engrave mode. Here’s what we get when Condensed mode is disabled:

But here’s what we get when Condensed mode is enabled:

All sub-section names have disappeared. Maybe there’s a way to let them show but I couldn’t find that option. That would be good solution though.

Idea #2: As a workaround, we could directly add a staff text to each note and adjust its position accordingly. This works fine as long as Condensed mode remains disabled:

But the moment we enable Condensed mode, the (supposedly) middle note number appears to be missing. I guess Dorico considers both “(4)” as identical and discards one. But as one might expect, the missing text would be displayed if it were different (e.g. “(5)”). Again, I may well have overlooked an option somewhere.

Idea #3: As a last resort, we could enter the notes as plain chords, add a staff text to each note and manually place them (as I did in MuseScore) like this:

It obviously works the same whether Condensed mode is on or off. But using voices to engrave a divisi is a real pain in the neck and, well, defeats the purpose of Dorico’s automated divisi system in the first place.

Hmm… did I miss something, an option perhaps? Or does anyone know a better way to solve this problem?

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I find I can attach all the labels to one staff with a carefully placed staff text item in galley view, and that shows with condensing divisi. Does that work for you?

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Hi @madjyc, I tried and the solution suggested by @Mark_Johnson works, but needs some fine adjustment, as he said.

I came with another idea: using fingering placed on the left, with edited fingering music symbols (to add the parentheses). Those are placed automatically, condense nicely, and it works if you don’t need those fingering in other places (because they have now parentheses), or you can edit and use the plain version or the italic version of the fingering music font:

Dorico File example:
divisi number with modified fingering.dorico (587.4 KB)

Result(s):

Editing the fingering music symbols (for the needed numbers…):

And, as an extra bonus, they are automatically correctly placed in the Parts :slight_smile: :

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@Mark_Johnson and @Christian_R, thanks a ton for sharing your expertise!

Indeed, sticking all the numbering on the top staff does work perfectly, and it’s a versatile solution.

The fingering approach is absolutely awesome, I would never have thought of that! It fits perfectly in the context of an orchestral score where fingering is not generally used. I tried fiddling with Library > Font Styles… > Fingering Font, but only the number itself would change, not the brackets, so I guess all the scaling and offsetting has to be done directly in the Library > Music Symbols… dialog for each fingering, not a big deal. Once that’s done, it works like magic!

Well, I suppose the only remaining problem is Dorico’s current limitation to a single type of divisi in the same system (e.g. a3->a2), which sadly makes it barely usable when this kind of divisi juggling occurs. Of course, when that happens, one can always revert to chords and voices, but I do hope this limitation will be overcome in the future. IMHO, automated condensation of divisi is one of Dorico’s greatest features.

Oh, and thank you Christian for sharing your file, it helped me a lot!

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The fingering idea is brilliant! The fact that it spaces automatically is worth the rest of the workaround. I played with it a bit and found two more things:

  • Fingerings do not accept 8 or 9, but will accept 10 and higher numbers.
  • Dorico can draw parentheses around cautionary fingerings, but only on a note that is tied-to. So close, but no.

It seems to me these are both limitations that could be lifted. The 8s and 9s exist in SMuFL and are even named in Music Characters, in all 4 styles. @dspreadbury, do you think it would be awful to allow 8 and 9 in order for fingerings to be artfully “misused” for other purposes? This is the second purpose I have encountered. The first was as harmonic numbers for overtone singing.

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Instant application to “11M2 The Funeral Pyre” from “Conan the Barbarian” by Basil Poledouris. :wink:

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