Request for one-click Explode

Dorico
1

I understand condensing will not include the reverse (expanding a condensed score to individual parts). I also understand the reasoning.

As you know, it doesn’t parse out changes in the number of voices: that is, Flute 1-2 sharing a staff is two voices if they’re different rhythm, or one-voice chords if the notes are the same rhythm. The convention, I’m told, is to be consistent within a bar, and only change the number of voices at the start of a new bar.

Explode works great–incredibly well, actually. I create an “everything” score for the purpose of condensing that is grouped accordingly:

Flute 1-2
Flute 1
Flute 2
Oboe 1-2
Oboe 1
Oboe 2, etc…

I’ve never had a problem with it, but I do have to explode in sections. Many times I’ll have alternating bars of one-voice chords and two-voice polyphony. So I have to click on that bar or group of bars, Ctrl-C, click on the bar below it, and Explode (which I’ve mapped to Ctrl-Alt-E.

I just spent about 20 minutes creating individual part layouts from a condensed score, and I think a few small changes could make it much faster.

I’d like to request expanded functionality for Explode. My suggestion is to be able to select the condensed staff for the entire flow, and simply one-command to Explode to the staves below. Essentially it would parse out the difference between one-voice and two-voice bars, and explode them accordingly. Admittedly it would be the arranger’s job to make sure he or she was consistent in his use of voices! But in some ways that’s how explode works already - it’s possible to mess it up, but when the score is properly prepared, it’s fabulous.

If not that, then perhaps being able to “Explode” automatically from a selected range of bars to the bars below, without having to Ctrl-C and then select the bar below. That way, I could Shift-click to the end of a range and explode without having to scroll back to the starting point and manually select the bar below it.

Either functionality would make exploding parts so fast that I wouldn’t care if the parts weren’t dynamically linked!! :wink:

Thanks for the consideration Daniel.

2

If you write your “condensed” music onto the staff that should end up as the top staff when everything is exploded, then you can simply select it, copy it to the clipboard, and trigger Explode, and it will replace the music in the top staff, so at least that aspect of it should be possible already. The thing you’re asking for concerning Dorico figuring out dynamically what to do with different voices over the course of the music you copy is a bit more of a tall order, but it’s certainly possible that we can look at this in the future.

3

Oh my goodness, how did I miss that. Thanks Daniel, that will already shave off a good bit of time.

4

Oh, now I remember why I didn’t do it that way. It duplicates dynamics rather unhelpfully. I think I’ll need to stick with the way I’m doing it now.