Play Mode shows staffs that don't exist in Setup Mode

Dorico
1

I have been struggling to set up notation for a synthesizer with a split, one patch on the higher half of the keyboard and another on the lower half of the keyboard. That is done easily enough by enabling independent voice playback. But I also need to have the lower half play an octave higher than written and haven’t found a great way to notate that while getting correct playback. Then, I went to play mode and found what is in the figure below. For some reason Play mode is showing extra staffs–one extra on synthesizer 1 and two extra on synthesizer 2. These extra staffs are not connected to endpoints.

Setup mode does not show extra staffs. The instrument definition shows only two staffs for the synthesizer instrument. This isn’t making any sense to me.

I need to make progress reducing a full orchestral arrangement to a smaller five piece ensemble, two of which will be synthesizers. It is very frustrating to run into something like this. Is there any logical reason why playback mode would start showing extra staffs?

Stone Ship 260912 5 piece reduction - Act I, Scene 7 — He Looks Like Love.dorico (1.8 MB)

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2

What you are seeing in Play mode is the result of assigning multiple voices to an individual instrument, each voice with its own VST assignment. That seems to reflect what you say you want, a single keyboard playing different sounds (therefore different voices) in the two staves covering different parts of the keyboard.

3

Yes. I assigned different endpoints to each staff of each synthesizer, but where did the third staff come from on synthesizer 1 and where did the third and fourth staffs come from on synthesizer 2? Note that these extra staffs only show in Play mode, not in Write mode and not in Setup mode. How could these extra staffs have gotten into play mode? Since they aren’t in Write mode, how could I enter notes on them, even if I wanted them. The synthesizer instrument definition only shows two staffs.

Is it saying that I could assign another instrument to staff a on synthesizer 1? How would that work. Could different voices on a single staff have different endpoints? Since I did some reduction to these staffs, they did have multiple voices until I consolidated them.

How do I get rid of that extra Staff(a) on synthesizer 1 that isn’t connected to any endpoints? How do I get rid of the extra Staff (b) and Staff (a) on percussion 2?

Okay, I think I may be seeing it. It is called Independent Voice Playback. So, each voice on a staff can have its own endpoint? But in the cut down version of the flow that I attached, synthesizer 2 has no notes, How could it have a staff showing in Playback Mode for a voice that doesn’t exist?

So, I set an endpoint for that extra Staff (a) in Synthesizer 1, and now it shows a mixer for it.

So, I disabled independent voice playback for both synthesizers. The extra mixer went away but each staff of each synthesizer has a mixer, even though both synth 2 mixers are grayed out. If I reenable independent voice playback, all of the extra staffs come back.

The question is still, how do I get rid of them? I don’t want multiple extra staffs showing up in Play mode as I reduce the full orchestration down to just five parts. Yes, I get multiple voices when I reduce, but then I move them all to a single voice. It’s great that each voice can have an endpoint, but how do you manage it? In Play mode, how do you tell which entry is assigned to which voice?/ Do you just have to live with the extra staff showing up in play mode?

4

Voices that used to contain notes but don’t any more remain available until you close and re-open the project. At that point, Dorico cleans up any unused voices.

If you’ve been working on reductions etc in the current session, then try saving, closing, and re-opening your project.

The names in Play mode correspond to the voice type in Write mode. When you select a note, its voice name is shown in the status bar at the bottom. You can also show voice colours to help you identify which notes are in each voice.

5

If I am trying something new and possibly beyond my experience, I would create a small test project where I could test what I wanted to do (and possibly go terribly wrong) without complicating the work already invested in my real project.

What I would do in what I think is your case, would be to take a single keyboard grand staff, and turn on voice colors. I would assign the voice in the lower staff to one sound and the voice in the upper staff to another. Since the intention is to divide the synth used in live performance into two halves, I would have to be sure I did not take the upper staff notes below the intended dividing point nor take the lower voice notes above it.

6

Thanks Lillie,

During the night that actually passed through my head, that I should have tried closing Dorico then reopening it.

But, I think I can turn it to my advantage. As I go through the entire musical, there may be flows where I want a synthesizer to use a different patch on one or both splits. Another thing that came to me in the middle of the night is that I can do that by using different voices. I do wish that the instance of the staff in Play mode indicated what voice it represents–also the mixer for the voice.

7

Yes, I am paying attention to parts crossing middle C.

It is a credit to Dorico that you can handle multiple arrangements of a piece all in one project. So far I’ve got the full orchestral arrangement, a piano/vocal score, and now this reduced, five player, arrangement I am working on for a workshop/production coming up in the spring of next year.

8

I just closed and reopened Dorico. My small test project still has the extra staffs showing in play mode. So I did a command + A to select everything then hit delete. I saved, closed Dorico, then reopened. Nothing changed in Play mode. Those extra staffs are still there. The unused voices should have been deleted when I closed and opened Dorico, right? So what is causing those extra staffs to remain in place?

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10

If I show the key editor in Play mode then select track headers it does show what the voice is.

Does the existence of the staff header and track for a voice make the voice exist, even if it has no notes in it? I don’t understand why the tracks for unused voices still exist after closing and reopening Dorico.

This isn’t the end of the world and it won’t stop my work, it just bothers me that I don’t understand it.

11

Since it’s a test project, could you post the Dorico file here?

12

It is my understanding that when IVP is enabled, empty voices are not cleaned up on restart. I actually rely on that behavior with my template for divisi strings.

13

I did post the flow I exported and cut down to eliminate all but the first two measures. I think it’s in the first post on this thread.

14

Thanks. That is good to know.

In the one flow test project I just turned IVP off for both synthesizers then saved, quit Dorico, then restarted Dorico. The extra tracks were gone. So I enabled IVP again and now each synthesizer has only two tracks, one for each staff in the grand staff.

As there will be flows in the project for my full musical where I will likely want to change patches, I think I will start adding notes to new voices on each staff, one at a time so that I can get the new tracks to appear in the order I want and so that I can change the name of the mixers as they are created to reflect not just the staff they are connected to but the voice as well.

Does anybody know whether or not I can rename the new tracks in Play mode to do the same? It would make my life easier if I could just glance at the tracks in Play mode and immediately see both the staff and the voice each is connected to.

15

Well, this is interesting… When I opened up my big project, the extra tracks were gone. I don’t remember ever disabling IVP and then quitting and restarting Dorico, but maybe I did. At any rate, IVP was already enabled when I just opened the project and there were no extra tracks.

16

Okay. Now I see how the staffs and voice are shown in the tracks in Play mode.

Staff (a) is the first staff in the grand staff. Staff (b) is the second staff.

A quarter note symbol with staff up or staff down shows whether the voice is up stem or down stem. The number following the note symbol is the voice number.