Trick DORICO into keyboard condensing

Dorico
1

If I understand things correctly, Dorico will refuse to condense a multi-stave instrument, such as a piano.

I’m wondering if this can be faked somehow? I would like to have staves A1, A2 (A3…) to condense into one stave for the piano right-hand, and then further staves B1, B2 (B3…) to condense into the piano left-hand. Presumably I can just enter two different instruments with duplicates, rename the staves, and assign a different instrument sound (I don’t actually know how, but I’m sure that can be done). But then I wouldn’t have it shown as one instrument after condensing, 2 staves with a bracket, and just one instrument name?

[It’s not important, but if you want to know why I want this: I need to typeset a piano accompaniment and arrange it for orchestra at the same time. Having all the musical materials in separate staves rather than separate voices is much easier to handle]

If it can’t be done, I’ll just have to copy/paste into different voices, but it’d be nice to have this setup once and for all for future projects.

2

You can’t easily do this, no.

3

You know that Dorico will Paste > Reduce several staves into different voices automatically, right?

4

Thanks Benwiggy. I hadn’t thought of using the reduce function (the number of staves won’t be very large). I’ll certainly look whether that makes it a bit faster.