I have a musical theatre project for which I’m starting to create a vocal score. For the group numbers, here’s my conundrum:
There are ten characters in this show (I know, really practical! But anyway…). Sometimes they sing solo, sometimes there are, e.g., 3 women and 2 men singing, sometimes they’re ALL singing, sometimes in harmony, sometimes in unison, etc.
I fiddled around with custom condensing groups, but seems like that’s really better suited to instrumental writing, because one character is always going to be upstem or downstem, even when solo.
Has anyone here found a good strategy for handling the fact that in a group song, the number of vocal staves (and who’s assigned to each staff) will vary throughout the song? Is there some way of using Dorico’s doubling feature to assist in this?
I’ve been doing quite a number of opera scores since I started with Dorico, and actually the condensing feature has never been a good option for vocal staves… Since singers do not use parts where there’s only their lines, but vocal scores where the singers’ staves are the same as in the full score (plus a piano reduction), using specific “instruments” when I need some combinations of singers, and following the casting off (some character might start on someone else’s staff until next staff break) is the way I do it. The result looks like what I’m used to reading when learning my roles, but there might be other workflows out there. I’m all ears (and eyes !)
Thanks, Mark! Yes, agreed, re condensing. To follow up:
If you have a moment, can you elaborate a bit more on “using specific ‘instruments’ when I need some combination of singers? How does that work? And does that help with the labelling?
Can you clarify what you mean about “following the casting off”? (I know what casting off is just not clear what you mean here.)
I believe Marc refers to the possibility of selecting a System/Page Break in Engrave mode, hitting Return to show the Staff Visibility dialogue and then showing/hiding what you need.
Be careful, though. What you hide now will be hidden for the rest of the flow so—if this makes sense—write the piece with all staves visible, then work your way backward crab-like.
Thanks MG! I could see this turning into a nightmarish dance between optimizing the casting off and hiding staves, since you can’t REALLY finalize the casting off until you know what’s going to be on a given page. So it’s a chicken-and-egg thing.… Still curious about the use of “specific instruments” for combinations of singers.
Unless there’s a good reason, I let Dorico hide empty staves after the first system and then go from there. If there are phrases where I specifically want staves that are hidden to be visible, I will add in a manual change (followed by a Reset wherever it suits).
Of course, I don’t do this until I’m done entering music…
I meant you add empty players as you need, so that you can label them as needed (A & B if you have A and B singing on that staff at that moment)
By casting off, I meant how you’ve made the systzm breaks once it’s all entered.
If you use the manual visibility tool, go backwards, as was suggested. The most important part of it is to set “Reset” visibility to the players that do sing, before hiding them on an earlier spot of the score. That way you’re sure you have not hidden stuff that should remain visible.
Cool idea! I wonder if there’s a way to use “flute/piccolo” style doubling to make it even smoother. Let’s say singer A is singing solo in bars 1-5. Then from bars 6-8, he’s joined by singers B and C. In this scenario, the music in bars 1-5 would be on the “singer A” staff (in galley view) and bars 6-8 would be on the “singer A,B,C,” staff. If the “singer A solo instrument” and the “singer A,B,C instrument” are both assigned to Player 1, then those passages would automatically be combined in the score, just like, say, flute and piccolo—you’d simply have to move the “instrument change” indication to write over the first syllable in bar 6. Marc, is that something you’ve tried?
The difference with flute/piccolo players is that the singers always use either a vocal score or full score. All the singers are there (except for some choir parts in opera, where the SATB each have their own score. At least, that’s what I’ve seen at Paris opera, my only real chorus experience). So I don’t understand what you are describing…
Here’s what I mean: I have an ensemble song with ten different characters. Each character has solo lines, and each character also participates in group lines (in different combinations). When all ten characters are singing at once, the point is that ideally you wouldn’t have the piano part plus ten different staves, as that would result in a lot of page turns. So the idea is a flexible way to reduce the total number of staves that the voices are written on by condensing multiple parts onto fewer staves when necessary.
Yes, and that’s what I have been trying to describe as additional players (staves that display the right singers in their labels). For instance, in the merry widow, some of those “players” are used twice in the whole opera, for five bars (the end of a finale where you don’t want to multiply staves since it’s already packed and singers all sing the same lyrics, etc)
Don’t be afraid of those “dummy players”, they don’t fo harm to Dorico’s efficency, and you’ll tailor your score exactly as you want. Note that you can keep them for the vocal score only, or the full score, the power of ticking into layouts is a great thing.
I have no fear about this stuff. We’re pretty much on the same page. What I believe I’m trying to add that you’re not doing is a system where, by carefully assigning multiple “instruments” (in this case characters or combination of characters) to a given player, Dorico’s doubling feature will automatically change the labelling on that player’s staff for me—a single staff containing the notes for Character A will suddenly switch to the “Character A and B” instrument, with the labelling automatically following suit. I actually got this to work. But… I realize that on this particular project, it’s too early for me to implement this, since the songs are still in flux. Thanks for the insight about using instruments to represent groups of singers in any case!
I’d love to learn about a system that does what you are saying… I don’t think it exists because at some point it might involve condensing. Or yes, I can imagine something where there is all singers combinations as different instruments held by the same player… And I believe it will soon be quite cumbersome because sometimes you want different singers to appear in different staves, sometimes you want them to share the staff, and mixing different techniques is more complex than sticking to one that works… YMMV
Right, that’s what I concluded—while my doubling idea is doable (I tried it), you have to create an instrument for each combination of singers, meaning an extra staff for each one of those. So it’s not clear it actually saves you time compared with just using text box labels… (If you do want to try the doubling idea, you have to go to Layout Options and remove the “instrument change warning” feature.)
This is not the solution I gave. It really depends on the house style you want to stick to. I wanted to have the staff labels right, hence a quite high number of singer “players” (solo singers and all the combinations needed in the opera).
I’m aware that’s not the solution you gave. It’s the likely solution I would use, since I believe vocal scores for musicals usually work a bit differently from opera vocal scores. I’m actually more familiar with opera vocal scores—I spent three years at the Nürnberg Opera as a pianist/conductor in the very early 80’s.
just not clear what you mean here.)