I apologise for asking such a basic question. I have searched the forum and the PDF manual without success.
I regularly arrange music for a Jazz ensemble. There are two of all the usual suspects (clarinet, alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet and trombone). It’s like Noah’s ark at rehearsals.
Till now I have created separate staves (section players) for individual instruments, dividing them into woodwind and brasswind sections.
To make reading of the score easier I would like to merge 1st and 2nd parts (1st and 2nd trumpets for example), onto a single stave. I could use copy and paste but then when I print parts everyone has to read divisi and I have had complaints that the faster and more complex passages become difficult to read. I want 1st and 2nd parts on the same stave in the score, but Dorico to recognise 1st from 2nd when it comes to generating the individual instrument parts. As an ex-Finale user the 1st and 2nd parts even showed in different colours which made editing the score all the more easier.
From what I have read on this forum, the process in Dorico involves “copy” and “paste special”, where the 1st part is defined “up stem”, and the 2nd is “down stem”.
The problem is, for the life of me, I can’t work out how define the 1st part as “up stem” and the 2nd as “down stem”.
Read up on Condensing in the manual.
The long and short of it is that in Dorico you start off with two separate instruments, then set them to automatically “condense” (reduce to a single stave, utilising either separate stems or shared stems, as necessary) in the score.
By the looks of it I was using the wrong search term, namely “merge”. I wasn’t aware it was termed “condensing” in Dorico. Maybe “condensing” is the correct term to use and Finale got it wrong using the term “merge”. At least I think it was called “merge” in Finale. I don’t think I could remember how to use Finale now even if I tried.
NB: define your parts as single players, not section players, otherwise this type of condensing doesn’t work.
(The other type is divisis in section players, like strings).
Can section players be converted back to single players or will I need to create new single players, copy and paste, and the delete the section players?
There are entries that point to condensing in the manual’s PDF index under “merging”, but you’re right that searching for “merge” doesn’t bring up condensing on the first page. I’ve added a couple more keywords so hopefully in the future it will.
Thank you everyone above for your rapid and helpful responses. I am back on track now and loving the way Dorico works.
Another mistake I made was to think that to be part of a “group” you had to be a “section player”. I see now that “single players” can be dragged and dropped into groups (woodwinds, brasswinds, and rhythm in my case).
A single player is generally for when you have a 1-to-1 correlation between instrument/staff and person: Flute 1, for example. Single players can hold multiple instruments: e.g. for when your Flute 1 doubles on Piccolo.
A section player is generally for when the instrument/staff represents more than one person: the Violin I section in an orchestra, for example. Section players can only hold one instrument, but they can then play “divisi”.
Thank you Lillie. You have been a big help. I thought a group had to be created to ensure the correct bracketing of a section would happen. Good to know that Dorico will bracket sections appropriately without having to create groups.
About the difference in terminology: I would say Finale is correct to use the word merge since the result is a new score or staff that is permanent; whereas Dorico’s condensing is dynamic, and the source staves remain unchanged.
