Hi, all,
I’m currently writing a piece for chorus in which the voices split into over fifty parts for one section of the piece. Given the unwieldiness of that many staves on one page (even at 11x17/tabloid size), is it possible to create (or fake) a system split across two facing pages?
I suppose it could be faked with a different flow, but I’m not sure how I would insert a separate flow inside the main flow. In other words, have Flow 1 (main flow) interrupted for two pages, then Flow 2 with the multiple staves on two pages in the middle of the score, then continuing on with Flow 1.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how I can most efficiently achieve this, and thank you for your time.
Couldn’t you create a divisi of your Chorus and then Hide/Show the needed players for each page.
Eg if you require 2 bars of 50 voices singing Happy Birthday, you could spread it out over 4 bars so that 25 players are playing Happy Birthday in the first two bars and the other 25 are playing Happy Birthday in the second two bars. Hide the second 25 players in the first two bars, and the opposite for the second two bars. Adjust bar numbers as required.
Obviously, the playback will be wrong.
Just a thought…
Do you at any point need each part of this divisi a 50 to have their own part, just showing their line of music?
You could either divisi them using the in-built functionality and condense them back down onto fewer staves, or simply write multiple voices onto a smaller number of staves manually.
You can also change the staff size for individual systems from the break at the start, if you didn’t want to change the staff size for the whole layout but would like this particular page to be smaller.
Thank you, Daniel. I think this might be the best solution, even if it’s a bit tedious. As much as I like Dorico, it often requires multiple steps/mouseclicks to get one thing accomplished. It would be nice if I could just, by default, quickly control/command-select the staves I want hidden and do a key command (is that possible???).
Yes, each voice has their own text and independent music. I’ve already “divisi’ed” them, so I’ll probably use the handy subordinate measuring numbering system feature, which I just learned exists. I’ll have to experiment with what fits and is still legible in the full conductor’s score. My guess is I may have to create partbooks for the four choirs using different layouts. Oyyyyy! Ha.
If you really want to go down that route, you should perhaps play around with frames and frame chains, because you can still do fairly complicated things with multiple flows on various pages, you can simply use frames and frame selectors to determine what music appears where.