Lyrics in Dorico Pro

[Gite]

How can I write lyrics for a choir (SATB) if I only want to enter the text once, for example between the staves? If I add the text to each voice, I will obviously get four lines of text. If there are several verses, it gets very confusing. Thanks for the help, I’m coming from Finale and I am new to Dorico - a really great program otherwise.

[benwiggy]

I presume you’re talking about a choir reduction on a grand staff, where SA are two voices on one staff; and TB are two voices on the other?

It’s not that different from Finale – just select a note in either the Soprano or Alto part, and then enter the lyrics with Shift L.

If you want different lyrics in the Soprano part, you can Flip the lyrics above the staff by pressing F.

[Gite]

Thanks benwiggy. Exactly, that WAS my problem.

[JAMES_GILBERT]

In addition to flipping the lyrics, you can also type Shift-Up arrow to get a dedicated line of lyrics above the music.

[BanjoPete]

In my case it is a little different. I have four different players (soprano, alto, tenor and bass). I entered the lyrics for each of them (three verses).

Now I want to show these four voices condensed to two lines, as usual in choir music. However doing so results in each voice having it’s own lyrics. Thus I have the same lyrics four times in the same system.

How is the best way in Dorico to do this? Having Choir-Layout and Single-Voice-Layout in one file?

Advice appreciated.

[Mark_Johnson]

Proper choral condensing is not supported as yet. Search the forum and you will find this has been discussed many times.

Condensing SATB

Unless you are planning to make a choral score with 4 separate staves, there is no need to write them that way. The current best practice is to write stems up & down directly on 2 vocal staves, the way they will be read.

[Gite]

Thanks for help. Would be an improvement for a new Dorico version.

[BanjoPete]

Thanks for clarifying. I obviously used the wrong key words while searching the forum. I agree with @Gite it would be a great improvement to have it.

there is no need to write them that way.

As newbie to Dorico I do not know if it matters but with Finale it was a bit complicated to handle the playback-setup of the four voices within a condensed system. So I used four separat staffs for playback and a condensed System for print. I’ll see how it works in Dorico.

[Janus]

@BanjoPete

So I used four separate staffs for playback and a condensed System for print. I’ll see how it works in Dorico.

If you are using the 2-stave approach (SA/TB with 2 voices on each stave), you can use Independent Voice Playback to route each voice to appropriate sound.