Can anyone tell me what’s going on here? When I copy and paste the horns into the trumpets, the first trumpet is turning into a new, stems-down voice. I’ve switched on voice colours to highlight it in the video. Since I am working in galley view and relying on Dorico to do all the condensing later, there is no reason ever to have multiple parts on any solo instrument’s stave. Question asked in FB here
If you select a single note of the Trumpet 1 stave, then look at the status bar (at the bottom of the window), does it refer to Up-stem Voice 1 or Down-stem Voice 1?
Hi Leo. Downstem voice 1, as is the horn source. Odd since it’s all blue. If the colours don’t tell you it’s a different voice, what good are they? In the meantime I have pasted in a part which I copied from and up-stem voice 1 oboe part, and it becomes, on pasting to the horn, a “down-stem voice 2” phrase, even though it’s up-stem and there are no voice 1 rests. (see picture). I confess I’m utterly baffled by the voice differentiation. I just want all the wind and brass to be a single voice since they’re solo instruments - I want any the voice differentiation to be created by condensing at the end… 
The colours tell you which order the voices were created on that instrument, but that’s about it.
I suspect that either the file originated as MusicXML, and the voice directions were bungled on the way in, or at some point someone’s gone Edit (or right-click) > Voices > Default Stems Down. The Default Stems Down and Default Stems Up buttons redefine an upstem voice as a downstem voice or vice-versa.
I suggest you Select All, Edit > Voices > Change Voice > Upstem Voice 1. Then Save the project. Then close the project. Then reopen the project and hopefully all will be well.
(The act of closing and reopening the project clears out any unused voices).
It did start out as a MusicXML but so long ago, and such a tiny part of it, I’m amazed it’s still in the DNA; this section is all new material. I’ve saved the project with a new title which I’m glad I did because doing the select all/change voices that you proposed has caused it to crash. 
Well ok, do it an instrument at a time. It’s not exactly possible to know how big the flow is from your video - if it’s large, it may take a while.
The point about it being MusicXML is that every stave will start with a voice. In a native Dorico project, that’s always an Upstem Voice - though you can redefine it as a Downstem voice using the “Default Stems Down” function. In a MusicXML file it might be identified as a Downstem Voice. If you go on typing music into staves that already exist, you’ll type music into whichever voice already exists on the stave. If it just so happens that you try to copy and paste music from a Downstem Voice to a stave that only has an Upstem Voice, Dorico creates a new Downstem Voice on the destination stave, believing that the Downstem designation of the source music is important.
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Sorry, I’m sure your solution is spot-on. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. It does actually look like it’s still working it out quarter of an hour later. Is this something that Dorico is just very slow at, or do you suppose I need a faster PC? I reckon there might be about half an hour of music in the file over 3 flows; Classical symphony orchestra, strings all on two staves each…
I suspect this is just something Dorico’s slow at doing, particularly with a lot of material. There are likely quicker ways of handling it with a little more user intervention:
I’d probably turn on voice colours, check that one of the blue notes on each stave is Upstem Voice 1. If not, change it to Upstem Voice 1. Then I’d work through just the other colours and change them to Upstem Voice 1.
It’s done it! It took 25 minutes, but it seems to have made everything upstem-voice 1. I think the lesson is to do this at the start of the MusicXML import, not 6 months later. Many thanks for your help, as ever.
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