Hi,
So, I’m sketching a composition and I’m thinking ahead a bit: How do I properly organize/prepare a large orchestral score in Dorico? I am specifically worried about the “vertical” side of things, let me explain:
Back in Musescore the way I would handle big orchestral scores was to put sets of instruments under one staff so it wouldn’t occupy so much vertical space. Eg instead of having my 3 bassoons in separate staves I would write them in just one staff.
I feel like if I do that in Dorico I will be shooting myself in the foot, as it handles instruments as players, and generating said individual parts for players would be a nightmare using this method, and I want to streamline the part generation process as much as possible in the future.
The problem is that I just don’t want to have to deal with 8 separate staves for my french horns when I’m orchestrating, let alone all my players individually (the score for that would be unbeliaveably huge and impossible to manage).
So how do I circumvent this? Can I use Dorico’s condensing feature to my advantage here? (never used it, so some step-by-step help would be greatly appreciated).
Any tips in dealing with that/huge orchestral scores in general in Dorico?
Thanks,
I think if you don’t want to deal with the 8 horns while writing, your current way would be best. I do it. Then you can explode the music onto however many horn parts you have.
Next comes the condensing. Once switched on, it should condense your 8 players automatically into as few staves as possible (or as few that you choose). And if you need to do little edits, you turn condensing off to edit. In short, you can’t edit the music while condensing is on.
You can if you’re working in Galley view, although depending on the size of the project, edits will be slow because the condensing needs to be recalculated constantly.
What I’d do is work in two steps: create some extra horn players (perhaps in a separate player group, so they don’t mess up the numbering) and sketch out the orchestration the way you’re used to, then do a pass where you distribute the material onto the eight separate “final” horn parts, which you can then have Dorico condense.
Ah cool!
What I do, as I explained to you in another thread, is I open two windows with the full score, one in page view (Engrave mode or write mode), the other in galley view (write mode). I use the latter to edit whatever needs to be edited when condensing is on and page view doesn’t allow edirs. Way faster than switching views. Switching focus on different windows is almost instantaneous while switching views (page/galley) can take up to 10s or more…