Question and Suggestion about condensing

[Robby_Poole]

I generally do NOT work with condensed scores. I usually just leave all staves in their natural state in any of the engraving projects I do. However, today is a new day and I am trying to expand my tool set.

In the graphic below, I am running into an odd question and maybe someone can help.

Question: Horn I and III show stems up and down (identical part), then switches to unison. Horn II and IV, start with unison immediately. Can anyone tell me why? It’s not an issue necessarily, just inconsistent.

Suggestion: Trombone I and II do not condense in this flow only. I spent 30+ minutes tracking down that it has to do with pitch crossing. Which is a brilliant idea, however was not easily understandable as the pitch crossing happened for about 9 bars towards the end of the piece. It might be nice if disallowing pitch crossing allowed the bars that do not cross pitch to condense. So in this example, Trombone I and II would condense for the first 4 pages of the score, then not condense for page 5 and 6, then condense again page 7 on.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Robby

File:
Second Suite for Military Band in F Major - March.dorico (3.1 MB)

[Lillie_Harris]

At first glance, the horns condensing into different stems for 1/3 looks like it’s because they have different slurs in bar 6 (ie Horn 1 has a slur, but Horn 3 doesn’t). This sort of notational difference will prompt a shared-staff, separate-voice condensing result.

[Robby_Poole]

Lillie,

I am not following you. I see a slur on both horn parts in the un-condensed version.

Might it be, that something is happening ‘behind the scenes’ that makes them different slurs?

Thank you,
Robby

[Grainger2001]

Had a quick look…In Layout Options you can create custom condensing groups under the players tab…If you put in Horns 1 & 3 together as a custom group and 2 & 4, it works as expected. Another way to achieve the desired result is to move horn 3 above horn 2 in Setup Mode. This gave me two ‘unis’ signs however - one of which you could hide in Engrave mode…The custom groups is probably the way to go…