Voice/layer identifiers

Dorico
1

Is there an easy way that does not rely on colours to identify whether a note is voice 1, up/down stem, some other voice, a cross-staff note, etc…?

I’m colourblind and quite honestly it REALLY strains my eyes trying to figure out which voices are which colours.
I’ve been working on a piano reduction, and there are multiple voices/stem directions per staff, and lots of cross-staff notes.
it would be nice to be able to click on a note and have a small number appear somewhere that identifies the voice number, maybe a “C” for cross-staff, and little up/down stemmed note to indicate which it was.

One of the reasons this is so difficult is that on a grand-staff there are multiple voices, thus multiple colours for all the different voices, plus different colours for cross-staffed notes.
This adds up, and it’s nearly impossible to select colours I can see and that are easily distinguishable for me.

For example, I can’t see red or green clearly, so any colours that contain a significant red or green element to them is problematic.
There are only so many shades of blue before they become too close to distinguish clearly.

2

This already happens. Click a note and look at the bottom (leftish) status bar. If you have only selected a note it tells you the note and voice.

1 Like
3

ahhh, there HAD to be something I was missing.
thank-you.

2 Likes
4

one thing that could be nice for people like me would be to be able to un-dock that little indicator, so we can place it somewhere else on the screen without always having to search the bottom of the page when working on the top of the page.

but that’s a very minor thing. it’s good to know that feature is there.

5

You can also change the voice colors in D4 to sth that maybe creates better contrasts for you.

6

no, unfortunately, it’s as much trouble.
two shades of the same colour may seem drastically different to normal-sighted people, but for colourblind people it can be just as confusing. remember that the differences in shades are often the addition or removal of a small amount of another colour… and often one which we (colourblind people) cannot see.