Dorico 3 Condensed Scores

[NoisyTunes]

I wonder how Dorico will handle orchestral scores with 8 French Horns, where each 4-note chord is played as 2+2+2+2. Will it require writing on 8 separate staves or just 4 (2 Horns per staff)?

[pianoleo]

@Daniel at Steinberg

Allow me to clear up the speculation about how condensing will work in Dorico, as there’s no great mystery: you will enter the music for each player individually, and Dorico will produce the condensed staff. You will not be able to input the music already condensed, as it were: for example, in the case of writing for a pair of solo flutes, you cannot input onto the staff for “Flutes 1 & 2”. You can only input separately onto the “Flute 1” staff and onto the “Flute 2” staff, and the contents of the “Flutes 1 & 2” staff are completely dynamic.

The reason for this approach is that it is impossible, in the general case, to correctly discern what the complete and unambiguous music is for each individual player from music entered condensed. I don’t use the word “impossible” lightly: this is the conclusion we have come to after thinking deeply about this problem space for years. The only way to be sure that you can produce both a correct condensation and correct individual parts is for you, the user, to specify the contents of each part. Dorico can then determine how to produce the best and most efficient condensation.

If inputting the music condensed is important to you, then you’ll need to input the music for your (say) two solo flutes onto one of the solo flute staves as dyads or using multiple voices, or whatever you like, and then explode it out onto the two solo staves in order for Dorico to produce the automatic condensation. We plan to provide some tools to try to make it easy to input music for both flutes at once onto their respective solo staves, e.g. the ability to stretch the caret over both staves and then play single notes and dyads on your MIDI keyboard, which Dorico will interpret sensibly (i.e. unisons will go into both flutes, dyads will be split between them), but you simply will not be able to input the music in its condensed form.

The payoff for doing it our way will be profoundly worth it. You won’t have to worry about the disposition of voices in the source material. You won’t have to worry about layout of the score, and performing the mental gymnastics in advance to work out when you can and can’t condense the material onto a smaller number of staves for the width of a whole system. You won’t have to manage any of the staves yourself. You won’t have to worry about staff labelling, or labelling the changes between unison/solo passages. You will be able to just as easily condense four, six or eight horns as you can two flutes.

Like some other things in Dorico, the newness of the approach will require that you give up some of your current habits in the service of saving you a lot of time down the line.

[NoisyTunes]

yes, I read this. It doesn’t really answer my question regarding French Horns playing in unison pairs.

[Derrek]

Actually, it does. If the horns always play in unison pairs, then you really have only four parts. It’s just a labeling challenge. But if at any point the pairs split up…

[Rob_Tuley]

Note paragraph three. If your 8-horn section is playing in unison, will it require writing the same music on all 8 staves? Yes. But will that require a lot more work than writing it on one staff? No.

[NoisyTunes]

@Derrek

Actually, it does. If the horns always play in unison pairs, then you really have only four parts. It’s just a labeling challenge. But if at any point the pairs split up…

this is exactly what I mean, only four parts, but each played by two instruments. I wonder if labeling of the condensed staff could accommodate this.

[dspreadbury]

If you genuinely have only music for four horns but you expect it to be played by eight players, I don’t see how that’s any different than simply writing a violin part for your violin section: the number of actual players who will be playing the part makes no difference to the notation.

[NoisyTunes]

@Daniel at Steinberg

If you genuinely have only music for four horns but you expect it to be played by eight players, I don’t see how that’s any different than simply writing a violin part for your violin section: the number of actual players who will be playing the part makes no difference to the notation.

It’s not different except for the labeling. If in this case all 8 Horns play a unison, will the condensed staff show “a 8” or “a 4”?

[dspreadbury]

If you really have eight horn players and they are all playing the same material, then yes, the staff will be labeled something like “Horn 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8” and the unison music will be written with the label “a 8”.

[JesterMusician]

This is really exciting. Is the condensation configurable? For example, could it be written in two staves, each a 4:

Horn 1.2.3.4.
Horn 5.6.7.8.

or

Horn 1.3.5.7.
Horn 2.4.6.8.

Also, can a condensation change mid-system, such as to change the staff of a middle part?

[dspreadbury]

By default Dorico will collect up all adjacent instruments of the same type and condense them, but you will indeed be able to change the groups to be condensed so you can set up groups of interlocking horns. The condensation can change along the width of the system, but the players assigned to the staff cannot differ. (I’m not sure how this could make sense: you’d want a player to start on one staff and then move to another staff halfway along the system?)

[David_Tee]

This “instruments of the same type…”

Are voices considered to be of the same type - so that SA / TB can be written on two staves? If so, can lyrical variations be incorporated?

[dspreadbury]

At the time of writing lyrics are not handled yet, but it’s certainly in our plans for the feature to allow you to create condensed choral scores.

[David_Tee]

Thanks Daniel

[HeiPet]

I hope it will be possible to define, if 2 parts, which are condensed onto 1 system, will be shown as one voice or as two seperate voices (like ib chorale settings).

[mountainmusic]

@Daniel at Steinberg

{…} but the players assigned to the staff cannot differ. (I’m not sure how this could make sense: you’d want a player to start on one staff and then move to another staff halfway along the system?)

I agree that this does not really make sense mid-system. But here is an example where they change across pages/frames in Mahler 1, movement 3: where horns 3.5 and 4.6 change to horns 3.4 and 5.6 from one page to the next (see screenshots).

(PS: I’m not asking for this kind of staff assignment for Dorico 3. I just had to engrave this last month and so the score was at hand when I saw this topic)

[dspreadbury]

Provided your horns are all in the same group, then that kind of change from system to system will be no problem at all.

[gamarti2]

@Daniel at Steinberg

(I’m not sure how this could make sense: you’d want a player to start on one staff and then move to another staff halfway along the system?)

Though it doesn’t happen often, I disagree that it doesn’t make sense to move players from staff to staff in a condensed score on the same page. I’m only familiar with the Hal Leonard method of doing it, which involves the number of the instrument and a line to indicate where they’re moving. I’ve attached an except from a Hal Leonard published score where the 2nd horn gets moved around on a page. It also happens with the trombone section in this same score. Of course, if you can do it on page turns, that’s great, but it’s not always feasible.

I’ve only had to do this a few times in my engraving life, but it can make sense to do so.

[dspreadbury]

Well, you won’t be able to use Dorico’s condensing feature to do that, I’m afraid

[gamarti2]

Daniel, understood - I just wanted to make sure I provided a published example that wasn’t contrived by me!

For clarification sake, does your statement imply just the first bullet, or more of the second?

• Condensing as it stands today doesn’t include a the ability to do this
  
  
  
• Given how condensing has been implemented, this kind of ability isn’t possible without a feature redesign (which isn’t going to happen)

I know asking you to speculate is bad form, so no worries if you can’t answer - just want to understand, since I do occasionally have to do this.