I had seen posts regarding this issue, but I now can’t find them, and would appreciate it if somebody could point me in the right direction. It’s to do with score order in doubling instruments under Dorico 4. I have found posts which raise the question, but not - as yet - the ones I had previously seen that describe a workaround.
In the orchestra I’m writing for, 2nd flute doubles alto and second piccolo. In the condensed score, this creates effects like these:
And, regarding the 2nd piccolo: when I created it, I included it only in Flow 4, but after giving it to the player of Flute 2, the sole piccolo in the other three flows now appears in the score as ‘Piccolo 1’, and I’d much prefer ‘Piccolo’ in those flows.
As far as I recall, the way around this involved cutting and pasting, and manual insertion of instrument changes. Where can I find the process described? (Unless, that is, things have changed under Dorico 4, and that there is now an updated way of doing this.)
(Edited to correct ‘piccolo 3’ to ‘piccolo 2’)
For the Piccolo naming, you could add multiple piccolos, rename one of them with a space before the name. This will exclude it from Dorico’s auto numbering as it sees it as a different name.
As for the score order, you may need multiple Players if each Player doesn’t start with that Player’s primary instrument in every Flow. So, if, say, Flute 3 starts with Piccolo in one flow then you’d want that staff above the Flutes? But when the Player starts with Flute,then the Piccolo staff doesn’t show?
Many thanks for the responses - I shall give all of them a try. It seems to me that an arguably sensible process from now would be for me to proofread score and parts thoroughly until I’m as sure as I can be that all is correct, and keep the file for the instrumental parts (as they will have all the right instrument names, changes and announcements); then save the file with a new name for the purpose of sorting out the instrument order in the full score. Any subsequent amendments/revisions/corrections will need to be made in both files, but I’m used to that from a previous scoring program.
There was a suggestion in another thread touching on this topic that giving the auxiliary instrument to an empty-handed player would enable the typesetter to move it to the right place in score order. I’ve tried that with the E flat Clarinet (in reality held by the 2nd clarinet), and all looks fine in the condensed score - except that the staff for Cls. 2 and 3 now shows (to the left of each system) the numbers 3 and 2 (in that order), with ‘3.’ shown above the first bar of each system:
It’s arguable that this suggests I have four players, but I suppose that’s not of much importance in the greater scheme of things. However, excluding the clarinets from condensing to avoid this small issue would cramp even more of a very large score if each clarinet had its own staff and all three were playing. Is there a way to hide the pre-system number that refers to a non-playing instrument? There doesn’t seem to be anything in the usual options places. I did try Manual Staff Visibility, but that doesn’t work in this context (though it is a sanity-saver in so many others).
(Later) HOLD ON! I just remembered Condensing Change. I’m sure that’ll work, and I’ll give it a go next…
In case you’re still having trouble. For sections where Cl. 2 is on Eb, you could disable condensing on the Bb Clarinets via a condensing change and use manual staff visibility to hide Cl. 2. Then when all 3 are on Bb, re-enable condensing.
Thanks, Craig. I’d already managed to use Condensing Change to stop displaying Cl.2 before I had to leave my PC, but now I’m back I’m looking forward to working my way through the score. What marvellous features Dorico has, once one gets to know about them!
