Finale refugee here and working with my first project in Dorico (an orchestral work). I wonder what’s the recommended strategy for divisi strings in Dorico?
In Finale you usually wrote the unison in the upper part only and then hid the lower divisi when necessary. I suspect there is a different (and hopefully better?) solution for this in Dorico. Do you write the unison parts in both upper and lower divisi and rely on the condensing feature? It seems to work in the score but not in the parts. This score goes back and forth between unison and divisi so sometimes only one stave in the strings and sometimes two (or more). Nothing out of the ordinary but I suspect I have missed something fundamental about how this works in Dorico.
There is a dedicated “divisi” feature in Dorico, which you can find in the menu that pops up when you right-click on a selected note (it’s a submenu to Staff, called “Change divisi”). This allows you to add additional staves for the purpose ONLY where you want them, and to end them when you return to unison.
I was aware of how to create divisi with “change divisi” and this is how I set this score up. I did not know that you could end the div with “restore unison” and this seemed to solve this problem. (There was no such feature in Finale). Very handy.
Sorry but here’s another question: Why do I get different staff names in the strings in the screen shot below? Sometimes just “Vln I”, sometimes “1.2” and sometimes “1” & “2” on top of each other? I tried to find a global setting for this but couldn’t find it.
Thanks. Did do that but I still get very inconsistent behavior from staff labels (and this is with all instrument, including woodwind and brass as well). Sometimes “1.2” and sometimes “1” and “2” stacked vertically. It changes from page to page, even in the same instrument. Haven’t changed any of these setting as far as I can remember so I have no idea why this is happening.
If you don’t mind to share your file here, or a small part of it, like 2 pages, which shows the issue, someone will surely be able to help you.
Normally, by playing around with the above mentionned Options, you shoud be able to get a consistent display. Is it a native Dorico project or an xml import?
