I’m doing a ton of exploding parts. I have some Stream Deck functions set up to make it quicker, but a full orchestra score still takes about 20-30 minutes to finish.
Here’s what I do:
line up the condensed staff (example, Flute 1-2) and the individual staves (Flute 1 and Flute 2) in galley view.
Click through one section of Flute 1-2 at a time, copy.
select Flute 1 staff, explode
The problem is that there are several formats:
Two voices
One voice, two notes (dyad)
a 2 (unison)
solo bits
…so I have to do it in sections, and it changes quite a bit. Sometimes just a bar or two per “format.” What really adds to the time required is that, after I copy the condensed bit, I have to navigate back to the start of the section to explode.
What would make it worlds faster is if I could find a way to navigate to the staff below WITHOUT having to jump back to the start of the selection. That would probably cut my time in half, at least. Probably more.
When I make a selection of bars and copy, then press the down arrow, it takes me to the bar below the last bar in the selection. For example, if I click on bar 20, then Shift-click on bar 30, copy, and press the down arrow, the selection moves down to bar 30, and I want bar 20.
I’ve tried it starting from the end of the score and working backwards too: select bar 30, Shift-click bar 20. When I press the down arrow, it navigates to bar 30.
If there were a way to move the selection to the start of the section that needs to be exploded, I could turn all this into a macro, and probably explode all parts in 5 minutes. That really would add up!
Have you tried pressing the left arrow first? Because the selection goes to the previous measure when your selection begins at the start, you could try “Left, Right, Down”.
Also, an alternative, if you press Enter, the carret will appear at the exact position where your selection start, and when you press down you could paste at that exact position (be sure that the grid is less than the subdivision, because when you press down the caret goes to the position of the grid).
Although I can imagine what you are trying to do, I don’t know exactly how you are doing it. So, I hope this helps you. Also, I’m very curious if you will manage to do it. Keep us posted (I use AHK to automate some things).
Dan, how about setting a shortcut for Duplicate to Staff Below?
Then try doing this:
Select Fl1+2 stave (manually)
Ctrl+C
Duplicate-to-staff-below
Shift+Down
Explode
Why Shift+Down?
This selects all staves and when I hit Explode it affects the original staff as well (deleted some notes). What worked for me was hit Down once and then Explode.
If you start by selecting a Rest and type Shift+Down, it just selects the Rest immediately below. If you start by selecting a Note and type Shift+Down, it finds the nearest note immediately below, which might be multiple staves down. Thank you for reminding me of this!
What I was trying to do was select exactly the two staves below, in order to restrict the Explode function to just those two staves. If you’ve already accepted that you need to Explode in small chunks, then I can’t really see anything wrong with this method:
Manually select
Ctrl/Cmd+C
Enter
Down arrow
Explode
Dan, yes, I’ve recycled your Kyrie, purely for this example.
(I use AHK to automate some things).