This was created in Finale, which for the uninitiated did a pretty lousy job of condensing. Dorico seems to be a breath of fresh air in that regard. Unfortunately, this score I brought in from Finale had two parts condensed on a staff manually; I’m trying to find the most efficient way of fixing them so Dorico can handle the condensing. I have a passage like this:
The lowest staff, oboes, are giving me a headache. If I Copy the staff – these notes are on the Oboe 1 staff presently – and then select both Ob. 1 and Ob. 2, then Explode, this is what happens: Measures 18 and 19 explode as expected, with the stem-down notes being brought down to Ob. 2 and deleted from Ob. 1. But the other measures, where the rhythm is the same, aren’t touched. Then I can select these measures one at a time to get them to Explode. Is there some way to click Explode once, and have all the measures exploded?
Hi @Nuggethead,
it would be better if you share your Dorico file, to experiment (and see the context).
Another fast way to put the lower voice of now ob. 1 (in your screenshot) to ob. 2, it would be to select the bars of ob. 1, right click > Voices > Change Voice > Up-stem voice 1, then right click and Filter (in Select Only scope) for Notes in Chord>Bottom Note or Single Notes. Then with Option(Alt)+M (or also with right click > Paste special) Move them to the Staff Below (you can assign key commands to the other commands too).
Only be aware that you loose the slur in bar 19:
This is a long-standing issue that has been discussed many times.
I’ve posted about it several times myself. It makes it quite difficult to import pre-condensed scores created with other software.
I really hope this will be improved in future versions. Being able to explode an entire staff at once when importing my older scores into Dorico would save me a huge amount of time.
Since this feature request would be exactly the same process Finale uses to extract parts from a score, I guess it should be doable. (With the same uncertainties Finaly has when doing its magic, of course. But it has some options like what to do if there is only one note at a given time instead of 2.)
Respectfully, wouldn’t a decision regarding this amount of counterpoint come after the fact? I’m pretty sure that I’ve read posts from you stating essentially that “Dorico is not a mind reader.”
Nobody in this thread arguing for such a feature expects Dorico to do what your example shows. We are just talking about “If there are two players condensed, please explode them into two staves - no matter if the two players share the same stem or are notated using two voices.”
And you are coming along with “But what if I have a piano reduction of a whole symphony?”
This is not our use case. (And I guess you know that.)
I don’t know if it’s precisely a joke, but the example that @Janus quoted is perhaps the primary example in the orchestral literature of recondite voice-crossing. Look at the way the two violin parts interchange, note by note, between the soprano and alto parts, and viola and cello between tenor and bass. The point, I suppose, is that no software program, now or in the future, could be expected to untangle that choice of Tchaikovsky’s. Most listeners (unless they have studied or conducted or played it) aren’t even aware of this feature.
True. With tuplets, different strategies are needed. Here a workflow example (using marquee selection and Key Commands for filter bottom note, assign to next voice, filter Down-stem voice 1 ,and move to staff below):
This technique works, but it’s very time-consuming when you want to split two complete parts from an imported score. Dorico should really be able to do this automatically. It would save me a huge amount of time. In the age of AI, there must be a better way than the current feature.
I still have to use Sibelius explode feature which works better than Dorico’s one, even if it is not perfect
