Im currently working on a musical theatre piece and I’ve been uncertain about the best way to approach a layout for this genre. Each scene has different characters and ensemble members, and so I’m looking for the best way to go about formatting things, without having tons of blanks staves or confusing instrument switches. The same goes for the full conductor’s score. Any advice on how to go about this?
Thanks,
Merrick
You have quite many options in Dorico.
Performance wise it might be better if you work with dedicated files each scenes.
I don’t know if it is helpful to add only the instruments/characters, who are playing to each scene. In the end (especially the instrumentalists) like to see “tacet”-scenes, so they know where they are.
Maybe you can add always the full list of players, but just show the players playing in the scene, in the score?
You also can easily create a Piano Score as a custom score.
I don’t know if it’s allowed to recommend something on the forum. But I learned a lot from the Notation Central templates for big band. They also have for theater and there is now a summer sale. Might be a good idea if you can afford it.
I tend to create a Working Score that contains everything, all characters and even rehearsal piano. I also use this form for individual files for each song. That way, at the end, when I combine the various songs into one or two booklets (one for each act) the various parts should line up (give or take additional percussion instruments I may have added in individual numbers).
For display, I have a separate layout for the Conductors full score, and a rehearsal score; and in these I can hide unused character’s staves and the rehearsal piano.
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