I know this has been addressed before, but results I have gotten are a little different from what was discussed back in April. When condensing two divisi violin lines to a single staff, Dorico gave me these double note-heads:
My condensing settings are the same for both projects.
I should also say that sometimes I would like to have double note-heads instead of either a2 indications or combined up-/down-stems. I find the look of the following to be somewhat clumsy:
(I can’t recall ever seeing anything quite like this in a published score.) Perhaps in a newer version Dorico could offer double note-heads alongside the currently available options?
Condensing results are heavily dependent on context. Please cut down the project to just the relevant bars, then upload the resulting project, not a series of screenshots, as per the guidelines.
Here are the two project excerpts:
This is from the actual project, and the double-stops at reh. 1 have double note heads: DoubleNotes.dorico (495.2 KB)
Then, I copied the same passage into another ‘project’ that I use to experiment with notational solutions, and the double note-heads did not appear: NoDoubleNotes.dorico (511.9 KB)
I hope there is enough to go on here. This passage is actually about 200 bars into the project and there have been quite a number of condensing and staff visibility changes prior to it.
(By the way, the guidelines for preparing an excerpt from a project say that one types 9999 in the bars popover for deleting, when it should say -9999.)
The difference is the presence of the divisi C+D at the end of the passage (and for that matter the text “div.”),
Dorico condenses a phrase at a time, where a phrase is defined as the stuff between rests.
There are no rests between the harmonic and the C+D div, so Dorico has to condense the harmonics and the C+D div with a single approach. Look what happens if I move the C+D a quaver/eighth to the right.
Rather than inserting a rest, you could insert a Condensing Change at the C+D div that has nothing ticked except the Violins in the left side of the dialog. This forces what I like to call a “phrase break”, and allows Dorico to make a different condensing decision either side of the Condensing Change.
Thank you for this. I like your term “phrase break” for this action since it isn’t quite a “condensing change” as much as it is a “melodic parsing change”.
