Urgent help with voice management, exam next week!

Dorico
1

Hi,

I have a transcription exam next week and need urgent help with how Dorico shows the voice-layout

I have looked through the forums but I can’t seem to find an answer. My professor wants me to have the voices written out like this:

Skærmbillede 2025-12-01 231843
Skærmbillede 2025-12-01 2318431876×937 22 KB

Besides the forums, I also looked through the Engraving and Notation Options, specifically searched through the different voice options. I found one that should prioritize the higher notes to the left, but in practice when I have three voices it changes the rules and I can’t figure out why.

What I have done so far is move the middle voice to the right via the Engrave option so that the bass and melody align, but there must be a better way than that.

I’m using Dorico 6 Pro on Windows 11.

All the best, and thanks in advance.

—Jan

2

for reference here’s how Dorico writes my voices currently:

Dorico Question
Dorico Question2337×691 21.1 KB

3

I’m not sure which option you’re referring to, but you could try in Engrave mode explicitly setting the voice column index for the lower notes to 1 and the upper notes to 0.

You can do this after you’re done entering notes by selecting all in Write mode and filtering by voice, then switching to Engrave mode; your selection will be preserved.

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Edit: @hrnbouma wins, that’s a much quicker solution. It does the same thing as my suggestion under the hood, but it’s fewer steps.

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4

If you go to Engrave mode, you can adjust the Voice column index property on selected notes for local fixes. The numbering starts at 0 for the leftmost column. There are some options under Notation Options > Voices you can experiment with, as well. In this case however, the quickest fix will be to select both up-stem voices, right-click, Voices > Swap Voice Order.

4 Likes
5

As @hrnbouma says the quickest (and simplest) fix is:

(In Write mode) Select the passage and right-click>Filter (select)>Voices>all upstem voices,

followed by right-click>voices>swap voice order

Don’t mess around with Engrave.

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6

so voice 2 should be the melody and voice 1 the middle voice?

is it an orthodox demand that my professor has given me, or why isn’t it setup this way?

Thanks for all the responses and help people!

7

It doesn’t matter which notes are in which voice—the important part is switching the voice indexes, which are positional only.

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