As a workaround to the difficulty of 2-part staves (i.e. Flute 1,2 on a single staff in the score), I am continuing a practice in Dorico that I used in Finale: maintaining a parts and score document, and breaking up 1, 2 staves into separate staves in the parts document. The explode music feature makes this much less painful for sure, but there is a behavior that makes it a bit more awkward than it could be. I noticed that that if you explode a passage that is in rhythmic unison at times, but then breaks out into 2 rhythmic layers, the portions in rhythmic unison remain in the top target staff. If you explode a passage that is entirely in rhythmic unison, the dyads are divided between the staves properly. If the explode feature could distribute the rhythmic layers in the target staves AND break the chords up in rhythmic unison passages in a single operation, it would make this procedure much easier, and I can’t think of a downside. I have a attached a graphic that illustrates what I’m talking about.
Explode respects the original voices of the source material, and it won’t necessarily distribute material in two different voices to the same destination. In your first example, you want it to explode the first down-stem voice and the lower notes in the up-stem voice to the same destination in the same operation, which is an obvious enough thing to you and me when we look at it, but is not straightforward to handle in all generality. We’ll think about whether or not we could handle this case, though.
Can somebody please point me to where the explode function is in Dorico? I don’t see anything in the Help. I see where one can select top note, second note etc and kind-of do your own explode. But I don’t see a proper explode or implode function. I’m probably looking right at it. Does it go by a different name?
