Managing players: flute 1 and flute 2 (with piccolo)

Dorico
1

Hello,

I love the concept of players.
(It is one reason of three why I moved to Dorico from Finale: automatically alignments of items such as dynamics, expressions, tempo marking, etc., the concept of players)

While using this feature in arranging an orchestral piece, I have confronted the followings:

  • Solo player 1 has flute 1.
  • Solo player 2 has flute 2 and piccolo.
    At first glance, this configuration is perfect. Dorico shows “to pic” and “to fl” automatically. It is amazing!
    However, I continuously see flute 1 and flute 2 on the score.
    I want to let appear only one staff for these two players on the score when there is no need to deal with these instruments separately; only one staff for flute 1 and flute 2 is required when they have rhythmic unisons or unisons.

How could I do it in Dorico?

In Finale, I made three staves: Flute 1, Flute 2 and Flute 1-2. Piccolo does not have a dedicated staff, and it shared the flute 2 staff. For playing, I can notate piccolo in layer 3 and let layer 3 is played with piccolo timbre. Then I manually moved notes properly and made a combined flute part using these three staves. This also occurs when working with Sibelius.

In Dorico, I am sure that there is an easy and intrigue way to do it.
Any ideas are highly appreciated!

2

Your options are exactly the same as in other software. The team will want to work on automatic condensation in the future, but there’s no original offering as of yet.

3

Dorico currently creates solo players for wind instruments, and each player can have multiple instruments.

If Dorico allows constructing sub-grouping and sub-sub-grouping of instruments and reflects this initialising default brackets, letting Dorico make double woodwind Ensemble will create

  • two flute players in a flute group in a woodwind group,
  • two oboe players in an oboe group in a woodwind group,
  • two clarinet players in a clarinet group in a woodwind group and
  • two bassoon players in a bassoon group in a woodwind group.

Here, users can add a piccolo to the second flute player. Then, Dorico can

  • show 1st flute staff if a note or notes appear on the 1st flute staff on any pages,
  • show the combined staff of 2nd flute and piccolo if a note or notes appear on the 2nd flute staff or piccolo staff on any pages with instrument change information.

What do you think about this idea?