In my current project, condensing is displaying behavior as if “Allow unlimited pitch crossing” was selected in Notation Options, when in fact “Limit pitch crossing” is. After experimenting a little it seems that staves will only “uncondense” if the passage begins at the same rhythmic position for all instruments. Polyphonic motives which enter later seem to be unrecognized as voice crossing at all.
This persists even when I recreated the passage which is shown as the example—the result, despite “Limit pitch crossing” being selected, looks like the image that’s given as the example for “Allow unlimited.”
Is this a known issue, or is there another option somewhere that conflicts with the first options under Condensing?
Indeed, ‘Limit pitch crossing’ only comes into play when the phrases for all players on the condensed staff are at the same rhythmic position. This is very important, since if it didn’t work this way, you would not be able to condense “dove-tailed” writing where each player hands off an overlapping figure to another instrument in the same section.
Hi Daniel, that makes sense, but right now it also seems that material which should not be condensed is condensed, such as the close canon I’m currently working with. Here’s a quick example: in a work for upper voices which includes a lot of unison writing as well as two- and three-part polyphony, condensing handles the unison writing perfectly, and divisi handles the three-part perfectly, but the two-part stuff gets condensed onto one staff in places I would definitely prefer it didn’t.
Is there a way to say “don’t condense this system”? Or will I have to find a workaround that doesn’t involve condensing, for the time being? It would be a shame, since condensing the unison stuff looks great and is such a time saver. SSA example.dorico.zip (1.69 MB)
I think you could trick the condensing algorithm. Out a part you don’t want condensed into voice 2 since those parts don’t condense. It’s worth reading the release notes in detail as they outline just what can and cannot be condensed; you might be able to leverage this knowledge to your advantage until more granular controls are provided.
That’s a great idea! Thanks, I did read the notes but I only interpreted that as something to avoid rather than something potentially advantageous. Ideally it wouldn’t be necessary but in the meantime that’s likely the least finicky way to do it.
In due course it will be possible to specify your preferred maximum amount of condensing for a given passage, but for the time being you are somewhat limited in the control you have.
Found a workaround, but unfortunately it requires an extra step beyond just changing the voice of one of the parts: you will also need to input something in the original voice with 0% opacity.
With voice colors turned on, it looks like this:
And the result:
Luckily, I should just be able to copy+paste this invisible eighth rest for the remainder of the project!
