In a choir score I need some spoken passages to be displayed with 1 line only. Since there is no option to change the number of lines I defined the parts as solo singers temporarily switching to percussion instruments. Everything worked so far.
Now I tried to introduce a divisi section, but this is only possible with section players. How can I redefine the parts as such? When I create new section players I can assign them 1 instrument only!
A lot of spoken words are notated with X-noteheads on the central line or 4th space. That would be one way to maintain the choral parts’ section designation.
Yes, I know. But I want a 1-line solution for spoken words.
I can produce what I want by workarounds (e.g. by introducing multiple players/instruments and hiding them when empty). As a former Finale-user I am acquainted with workarounds 
. However I think that Dorico as a superior solution should offer two things in this respect:
You must create a new Empty-handed section player, then drag the instrument with the music to this new section player. You can create any section player and delete the instrument within, or just invoke the create section player dialog and dismiss it (there will be a new Empty-handed section player).
Lucas – I can’t figure out where to drag. I can’t get anything to drag/copy in the left Setup panel. Do I copy/paste in the music staves? Thanks. – Bill
Drag from the lower violin label to the empty-handed player.
The upper label is the player, the lower the instrument.
Jesper
Yes, but this is a workaround and not very elegant. And what happens if I want a chorus with spoken words (i.e. with “2” instruments {voice and perc.}) which I want to divide at some point?
That is currently not possible. Solo Players can hold multiple instruments, but cannot divide. Whereas Section Players can divide, but cannot hold more than one instrument.
I know; I could create both solo and section singers and hide them alternately – I hope the developers will find a solution for this!
Here a very laborious workaround (only thinkable for a few short passages) that makes possible to have, at the same time, a divisi passage together with a (faked) one line for the spoken text.
(Probably the other method of alternating single and section players is much easier, but you cannot have the single barline and the divisi at the same time, as in my example)
This uses Erase background functionality for the text (that consists only in empty spaces), that conveniently hides the staff lines, but not the notes, stems, beams and lyrics. There is, for each one-line bar, a line of text above, and one below the staff, positioned in engrave mode, with avoid collision deactivated, and the Erasure paddings finely adjusted with the shortcut Shift+Option(Alt)+Command(Control)+arrow icons (or the arrow keys)
(I agree that it would be nice to have natively the possibility to change the definition of the number of lines in section players, since changing instrument is not possible):
Workflow:
Result:
Dorico file example:
Wow, amazing, thank you! this helps me to learn a lot.
