Issues writing unisons of the same duration with no overlap

Dorico
1

Hello,

First time poster here. So I’m a new music composer and although I’ve owned Dorico for quite some time, I finally decided to try to write a piece from scratch with it. I’m currently trying to input my string quartet and unfortunately, I can’t get past the first beat. I’m trying to write a unison of the same duration without the noteheads overlapping. I tried all the notation options but they seem to all be for unisons with different durations. Is anyway to remedy this? I checked the forum and couldn’t find anything. I’ve included a screenshot from behind the bars of how it’s supposed to look. and screenshot of bar 1 from my score of how it looks right now.

Thanks for any insight or help anyone can give. I’m really excited to start using Dorico full time. This hickup has been a real bummer.

Steve
Screen Shot 2023-05-23 at 11.47.02 AM

2

Screen Shot 2023-05-23 at 11.50.02 AM
Sorry, bevcause this was a first time post, Steinberg wouldn’t let me upload two images. Here’s from score.

3

You have to put the lower note in the same voice like the higher note, then you get what you want.
Slice 1

Maybe you have to filter the second voice first, then change to the upper voice (via right click).

4

Hi Chris,

Thank you so much for your help. I still can’t get it to work. What do you mean by lower note? These are both unisons so there’s two C#s and two Es. Still can’t get it to look correct. Maybe I’m missing something simple? I tried to receate what you wrote. I either get both down or if I flip the stem. It’s the same problem. I’ve include voice colors so it’s more clear. Thank you again.
Screen Shot 2023-05-23 at 12.14.42 PM

5

Hi Chris,

Ok, I figured it out. Thank you so much. Just out of curiousity, you wouldn’t know of a preference to set that to be standard, would you?

Thanks again!

6

Enter using chord mode. So shift-N Q, enter the D and another D. It will appear an octave higher, so select it and ctrl-alt-down to bring it to the unison.

1 Like
7

Yes, that’s the problem. Both have to be the same voice = same color. If you click on the orange note, il will show you the voice at the bottom of the page (e.g. first down-stem) and the pink one ist 2nd down stem. Right click on the pink and select voices-change voices-first down stem.

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8

Thank you both so much! Really encouraging to have such a supportive community. Hopefully, I can be as helpful in the future to a new user.

With much gratitude,

Steve

2 Likes
9

What’s the point of double-stopping the same note?

10

Another way of doing it is to select the note, press shift-I (for Interval), enter 1 into the popover and press Enter.

2 Likes
11

It’s a fairly common “thickening” technique. In this case, the two Ds are played on the G-string (stopped) and the D string (open).

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12

It’s quite common practice. You can get more volume, you get the greater resonance of the open string AND you can apply vibrato, which you can’t have on an open string.

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13

In my case, when I have a very thick texture and I want one note to pop out more than the others, I’ll double stop it. Basically for exactly the reason that Janus described.

1 Like
14

Boccherini does this all the time in his chamber music, clearly to enhance volume and resonance in forte passages.

15

I don’t want to hijack the post, but actually, this is what I want to do instead of noting “a2,” but I always end up with the double notes.

image

Example, when two flutes play the same notes for a while.

16

There is a preference (in Notation Options) to set that up in Condensing.

17

I’m surprised there is not a double-stem option. (I started this current project uncondensed–both clarinets on a staff, both trombones on a staff, etc.).

18

You can always insert a condensing change >manual >put each instrument in an upstem/downstem voice. There you have it. Double stemmed all the way.

19

@konradh
If one wants to enter notes (or import them) in a non-standard way for Dorico, that is certainly one’s right; but it is probably then unrealistic to expect the program to adjust automatically.

20

That’s a new function to me but I’ll give it a try. Sounds good. Thanks.