So, in the picture below, the two bass clarinet parts condense to a single stem while solo and 1st clarinet refuse to do so. Both sets have identical music for extended passages–more than a page for the upper clarinets, so… why?
Mannin Veen.dorico (3.0 MB)
It seems like with this setting (condensing change):
they do condense:
Even though you do have this setting in layout options:
Sure, that fixes the problem, but the question remains: why do the two sets condense differently from the start? I can’t find a reason. Perhaps @dspreadbury can take a guess.
The answer is at bar 18. The condensing works by “phrases”. A phrase is a section of music between two rests. On the second beat of bar 18, condensing needs to display two voices and there are no rests before. So Dorico displays two voices from the beginning!
So what you can also do is divide the phrase at this place by inserting a condensing reset. Then all the notes before will be displayed in a single voice from the beginning:
Mannin Veen.dorico (3,0 Mo)
Please watch
The kind of condensing can depend on the end of the phrase.
Yep, that’s the ticket. Using a simple reset works best. I keep forgetting that Dorico looks between rests for phrasing and not just how long parts are the same. It also explains why the bass clarinets combine from the start–they do have rests to mark the ends of phrases.
I watched that the first week I started using Dorico; that’s why I thought I had a handle on it, but this old brain forgets things I don’t use daily…
You might prefer to insert the condensing reset on the first beat of bar 18 in order to keep the slurs:
I’ll wait until I’m finished entering everything before tidying up with condensing changes. I only noticed this now because sometimes you have to check condensing to make sure parts are entered correctly to condense properly. I think that’s one of the drawbacks of Dorico’s modal system of score prep–it’s better to check in on Engraving mode as you work so you know things are lining up properly. I’d rather go back and forth than try to hunt down at the end the one note forcing system text and such to go wonky.
