Solo passage in a section part - best practice?

Dorico
1

Hello, happy Finale convert here, loving Dorico’s way of doing things.

I have a score for full orchestra, and I have a short passage I want played by the 1st chair violin as a soloist, rather than the whole Violin I section playing it.

I can, of course, add “solo” as staff-attached text, and then similarly add “tutti” after the passage is done. But is there a more semantically appropriate way to do this? I have the string parts set as sections rather than single players, and I have read a few things about Dorico’s divisi notations, but I’m not sure it’s taking me in the right direction.

Ideally, I’d love for the playback (I’m using NotePerformer) to switch between solo and section sounds accordingly, if that’s possible, but I understand if that’s not an option.

Thank you!

2

Divisi is exactly the right direction to take.

This requires a little discipline in the use of voices. You must use Independent Voice Playback and reserve one voice for your soloist.

3

Thanks for the confirmation! I’ll keep digging in this direction.

4

There are a few threads on the details of how to do this.

5

Thanks. I have things figured out now so it looks correctly. For future folks with this question:

  • To create the solo passage, I click on the first note of the passage, choose Edit > Notations > Staff > Create Divisi…, and click the Add Solo Division button. It automatically creates a “gli altri” division for the rest of the players, but I don’t need that so I select it and delete it.
  • Then I click on the first note after the solo passage and choose Edit > Notations > Staff > Restore Unison.
  • It’s worth noting that the labels don’t actually display above the staff in Galley View, but they show up in Page View. (Maybe that’s a bug?)
  • Also, Restore Unison automatically displays “unis.” above the staff. I want it to say “tutti” instead… this can be done in Engrave mode by clicking the “unis.” text label (not the purple flag), opening the bottom drawer to show properties, and enabling “Custom Text” there.

This looks great, but now I’m unable to set playback accordingly — because my divisi only has one staff (because I’m not using the gli altri division), Independent Voice Playback only “splits” it into one part instead of two, so I can’t set them to different sounds. Of course, I can make it work sound-wise if I have two divisions in my divisi, but then I have an extra, empty staff in that system that I don’t need or want. Is there another option I’m missing?

6

In this case, divisi is not the way to go.

As you want the solo violin and the section on the same staff, the best approach is:

  • use a single staff
  • put the solo violin music in a different voice from the section
  • Enable independent voice playback for the instrument in play mode
  • Assign a solo violin sound to the solo violin voice in play mode
  • Add text ‘solo’ at the beginning of the solo using shift-x, using one of the staff label font styles
  • Add Tutti at the end if you need to.
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7

I’m sorry. I strongly disagree. Divisi handles the notation perfectly.
It is only the playback issue that requires care.

8

Well, we’ll have to agree to differ. At least the OP has alternatives now!

9

Indeed they do (but my approach does not require any additional text annotations)

10

If you use “change divisi” you might end up with two staves on a system. I would think that if the section is tacet while the soloist is playing, it would be simpler to keep the one staff, no?

11

Thanks for all the alternatives, everyone! Seems like I can use the best of both worlds: “Create Divisi” to handle the visual and semantic aspects of the change, and moving the notes themselves into a different voice and using Independent Voice Playback to change the sound.

It’s not quite as elegant as having the playback automatically reflect the change, but I’ve certainly made far kludgier accommodations in Finale on a regular basis…

12

I have exactly this in one of my orchestral works. in my case, it’s a solo cello and a solo viola. I used the “same staff, different voice” approach. It looks good, and it plays back correctly.
this is a graphic snippet of the passage. on the next page the tutti sections return (marked as “tutti”.)

solo_on_staff
solo_on_staff1383×949 3.76 KB

return_to_tutti
return_to_tutti858×995 3.59 KB

13

If only Solo staves appeared above Tutti staves instead of shoving them out the way…

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