I’m running into issues where divisi changes happen in different places in the score vs. the parts; that is to say, if in the score the divisi change takes place on a new system, but in the part layout that bar is in the middle of a system, a divisi line will end up missing in the part, or else an ungainly situation earlier in the system where a divisi that had been written on one staff ends up getting copied onto a second staff.
I could obviously put in system breaks in the part to make the divisi changes fall the way they do in the score, but that causes some very awkward spacing issues.
I could also make new files so I can adjust the parts divisi without messing up the score, but that seems to defeat the purpose.
This is perfectly standard practice for parts. Each player will play their own line, even if they are still playing the same notes as their colleague until the point the divisi begins in the score. Dorico handles all this for you.
The divisi in the first bar had been written on one staff, but now that it’s on two staves it should be split between them without everything appearing twice.
I should clarify that the full score has a system break at the 2nd bar of this example. Moving the divisi change one bar earlier to accommodate the viola part will then cause other problems in the score.
It looks like bar 36 has been written as two voices on a single viola stave and the divisi created in bar 37. But without seeing the whole context it is hard to diagnose.
Yes, exactly. My question is — what are best practices to avoid having to deal with this type of situation? Write the entire viola part in divisi and then condense?
yes. in my experience, the part(s) with complicated divisi situations can sometimes be written as V1 and V2 just prior (or after) to where having 2 staves would create poor layout. that might alleviate unnecessary manual system breaks
I often notate (simple) 2-voice divisis on one staff, if I expect not to have to split staves anywhere near. In this case, I think it’s better to start the real divisi (i.e. bottom part on second staff) a bit earlier, and accommodate the notation before the system break in the part layout by inserting manual condensing changes.
In general, I’d avoid dependencies between system breaks in different layouts. A single correction might wreak havoc in places out of view.
