I am trying to transcribe a hand-written manuscript into Dorico. It is a fugue in four voices for pianoforte, condensed onto the usual two staves. At least one voice wanders between treble and bass clefs, but that seems to be a minor concern, compared to the title issue, because I could treat it as two voices, one for each clef, without much confusion, if only I could select it reliably. I watched one of the videos provided on the Dorico website for guidance, but this can be an indirect solution method for some issues.
I can create two voices in a single bar, no problem. Perfect for the kind of limited off-hand polyphony that occurs in a keyboard piece of varying texture, particularly if one is not fastidious about creating a fruit-salad of voice colours. The system presumably can dynamically re-use voices that evaporated a few bars ago, in order to avoid creating too many. But when I try to continue the second voice across the bar line, it dumps over the top of the first voice and obliterates the content there. There has to be a better way of doing this, but the example video showing the notation of a Bach fugue does not spell this out for me. How can I force Dorico to continue all voices across a bar line? Even if I introduce a note duration that crosses the bar line, the second part of that note will stomp on an existing voice beyond the bar line. I note that trying to select a rest with the appropriate voice colour seems ineffective, although even a rest can stomp on the wrong voice in the next bar.
I am tempted to write the whole piece as a piano duet, one stave per voice, and condense the manuscript onto two piano staves at the end using the Dorico command for that, but I am not sure whether that would work well, from my reading of the forum correspondence. The video that I watched certainly seemed to suggest that I would not need such a drastic workaround.
Clearly I am not thinking in a way that models the behaviour of the software. Please help me to reset my conceptual framework.
Have you tried moving voices to the other stave? N moves up, M moves down. In cases like yours, I write the voice in one stave, then drop or raise so it’s playable with two hands, but the voices remain consistent.
Note that alt-N and alt-M actually move the notes to other staves, but N and M (without “alt”) just display them on the other staves. Super handy!
Jeff, I don’t understand your procedure and your outcome.
Firstly, you can make the voice colours visible, so you “can see what is going on”.
Upper system:
Start inputting Upward Voice 1 until the very end of your piece.
Then do the same for the Downward Voice 2.
Dorico will sort out everything for you.
Lower system:
Do the same for the “tenor” voice (Upward Voice 1) and finally the bass (Downward Voice 1).
At the end you can manually (if necessary) move voices to the opposite stave by the mentioned shortcuts M and N.
Thanks for that observation. It suggests to me that I could write the piece as a piano duet, one voice per stave, then select suitable chunks from the lower two staves and progressively move them to one of the upper staves until the leger lines are tolerable. When this process is complete, I could delete the empty second piano part. The voice colours would then make sense. Does this work across separate instruments?
No, this is not a good procedure. M leaves the Downward Voice 1 in the upper system, but cross-staves it (displays it in the lower system).
There is no need to delete anything afterwards.
M does not move the music, it just displays it on the other system.
Thanks for the suggestion, but I am using voice colours until the score is complete, and at this stage of my experience seeing and believing have yet to coalesce. My work flow to date has assumed that I can fill in all parts for the same bar, and then play it back after a few bars have been completed to check for goofs. The terminology “upward voice 1” appears to be an approximation to reality; the stems can be pointing in the direction that fits the stave more compactly. This requires caution, and the use of voice colours to resolve ambiguities.
When you input the voices into your score, have a close look at that little orange icon next to the caret.
It shows exactly, which voice you are inputting (upward voice is stem up icon, downward voice is stem down icon) .
Dorico is absolutely consistent and reliable here.
You might get confused, because Dorico automatically and cleverly displays a line/voice with upwards or downwards pointing stems depending on the context.
To me it looks, you are making the whole thing totally complicated, whereas it is absolutely easy and foolproof…
I generally regard the size and diversity of the menu system as a reliable indicator of complexity. I think what you meant to say is that you have evolved a simpler way of visualising.
A question, and coming back to your initial question (thread title): have you tried the very simple approach by inputting the four voices one by one, from the beginning to the end, as suggested?
If you could share your project file (or a part of it), we can easily spot what is going on and help appropriately.
Thanks to all contributors to this thread. I recently found an Aladdin’s Cave of information about voices in the Dorico documentation, although I have not been able to find my way back to it again. I have completed one of my tasks to my satisfaction, which may be the toughest test that I might need to pass: a keyboard fugue in four voices, with individual voices rambling from stave to stave.
The resultant ms uses only four voice colours, and uses them consistently in the sense of green and blue in the upper stave, purple and red in the lower, although the voice leading is not strictly consistent with this division of material; a logical division would have voices crossing from one stave to another, and I did not trust my management of voice colours to show that. I used “scaffolding” notes to bridge rests extending across multiple bar lines in one voice, deleting them after all authentic notes in both voices had been entered in that region of the score. (Playback is a useful defence against forgetfulness.)
I should acknowledge that some of the problems I encountered were a result of memory leaks in Windows application software, which eventually caused other applications to misbehave sufficiently to arouse my suspicion. A reboot plus stumbling across that elusive piece of documentation was the cure for most of my difficulties. I am including a copy of the ms below to illustrate the issues.
