Feature request: the ability to name Voices, rather than just being “upstem voice 1” “downstem voice 3”, etc. It would help tremendously when writing to be able to see the sound associated (or just the general purpose) of a particular voice, especially when IRV is enabled.
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I’ll second this request.
Plus, you could add the feature request tag to have it stand out more…
B.
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I’ll third this request.
Yes!!
Naming is a neat idea, but it’s a new GUI and data structures for essentially dead end information. The names are just for internal bookkeeping and don’t end up the score, and then people would probably want to use them as tags which is even more complicated.
But there is a problem here in that the present naming is misleading when you flip a voice - it’s named according to the preflip state. And voices don’t stay with stems up or down all the time, and anyhow it’s too coarse to identify the voice easily (stem down voice 1 … stem down voice 2 - which is 1 and 2? And didn’t I flip 2 because it collided?)
I’d suggest a simpler and maybe better way which is to use the color as the name when voice colors is enabled. My voices tend to get flipped to get alignment and so I have to do mental arithmetic to figure out which is which. Instead a simple “Red Voice”, “Blue Voice” takes no mental processing. The voice number can be kept in there too which is fine, but it’s clearer to me to just use color.
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Another way to look at it, it’s sensible to internally store the original orientation of the voice and have an additional flip bit, but using that for identification is exposing an internal implementation detail that becomes confusing because the flip bit isn’t accounted for in the user presented name. Anyhow color would take care of it all, and an explicit user supplied name isn’t necessary.
I wonder how easy it is under the current system to associate a color label with the color of the notes. When I read the opening of your initial message, referencing the voice color was my first thought too, except for the immediate question of how to program it.
Not sure what you’re driving at … if there’s a ‘metaobject’ type class tree that is used for all score elements such as notes etc (seems to be since it looks like there’s OO sharing going in, e.g. everything has a color property), then it should be just a matter at downcasting to the type (voice) then pulling out the color, unless it’s not actually stored and is just generated on the fly. But this is all handwaving and I’m composing and now programming now anyhow 
The reason I want voice naming is because I write for instruments like synthesizers that can have several instruments assigned to both the treble clef and bass clef staves separately, and the only way Dorico currently handles this without having multiple grand-staves in the part is using voices, and assigning each voice to the appropriate playback sound. Admittedly it’s a hacky solution for a very niche edge case. It would be better to have settings that would allow for what I’m talking about within the current “change instrument” framework, but currently they don’t exist, so knowing which instrument sound I’m switching to when I’m looking at 8 different voices would be nice. Alas, I don’t expect to be appeased for such a niche usage.
I wonder if in your case, there’s a way of using a percussion kit using the 5-line staff presentation for each staff that would work? Hypothetically, each instrument in the kit could be a different synth.
It probably would be necessary though as Voice Colors are customizable. A label like “#ed6c1d Voice” wouldn’t be terribly helpful, LOL! An input field to have the option to give the Voice an custom name in addition to a custom color seems like it would be a pretty nice idea though.
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+1 for naming voices
I might be missing something in your suggestion, but since the instruments are tonal it doesn’t seem like the percussion kit route would work.
Oh cool, didn’t know that - Dorico has so much stuff. Yeah that complicates it for sure … but knowing this I’m not sure of the utility of a name in addition to “Voice X”. At most the option of replacing “Voice X” with a string of your choice.
Well I guess I’ll isolate my tiny issue is that the up/down stem part quickly can become confusing as stems move around, so I’d keep it just to Voice X and let you sort it out, but hey-ho.
On the default colors I would have chosen the primary (RGBWB) and complementary (purple, orange, etc) instead, maybe I’ll go in and do that.
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Hello Dorico team, and fellow Doricians,
+ 1 here for the Voice naming / id idea! 
Long time ago I discussed similar topic on the forum.
It would be more comfortable if we are have clear voice naming scheme, especially if we are using
instrument library layering
It’s great that Dorico gives us the ability to have, literally, unlimited voices per staff. Still I believe that the area of the Voices could be improved a bit more.
Best wishes,
Thurisaz
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I think I just left them all as default except for changing voice 1 to black. All my Gradients are based on jazz album covers though, LOL!
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+1!
Plus: An option to rearrange the voices in Play mode would be great. I use independent voice playback and the plugin Aeolus to gain a clear aural idea of the harmony and polyphony of an organ piece as a preparation for efficient rehearsal. Currently, I have this image in Play mode:
It would be much better to have the voices named Soprano, Alto, Tenor et c. and to have them arranged in their correct usual pitch position. In the screenshot the arrangement is Soprano-Tenor1-Bass-Alto-Tenor2, which contributes to the increased amount of mental dancing required along with translating “Staff (x) up/down” into their respective voices in multi-part harmony.
P.S. A mixer for independent voice playback would be neat as well…
I would love to have voices’ association with parts, stem direction, voice color, etc. more clearly shown. I imagine the current approach shows them in the order in which one has created them.
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