Voices, voices, voices

You’ve heard it before. “I could do this easily in Finale…”

Four staff SATB. I want
S in voice 1.
A in voice 1.
T in voice 1.
B in voice 1.

I can easily enter notes, and generate part-predominant playback from the mixer. Even I can do it.

Now, I want to condense the score, to SA/TB with S in voice 1, stems up. A in voice 2, stems down. T in voice 1, stems up, B in voice 2, stems down. Then, of course, delete the extra staves, or paste into a new, 2-staff document.

It seems to me that it should be easy to change the voices of A and B, and implode the staves. According to what I read, I should select what I want, and Edit > Voices > Change voice. But my edit menu does not have that entry. Was that a Dorico 4 option that was removed?

I’m sorry, but this should not be so difficult.

Hi @wawoodman, you can copy the S and A and then use (selecting the destination rest on the upper staff of your Choir reduction instrument) and then mouse right click) Paste Special/Reduce, and do the same for T and B.
Dorico will take care of the voices assignments automatically:

To handle the lyrics, make sure first that the lyrics of S and T are Above the staff (select S and T, filter for Lyrics and press F), and they will maintain this property, when Reducing:

To make the editing more comfortable I suggest to work in Galley view, and expand the Ideal Staff Gaps for Galley view to something like 180% (this just make the fixed distance of staves in Galley view bigger, and doesn’t influence the spacing of Page view. When you go back to Page view all the spacing are adjusted automatically accordingly to your Layout Options etc.):

1 Like

PASTE SPECIAL
I am new to Dorico…I learned a bit about Paste Special in a youtube video by CJ Rhen. The youtube thumbnail has Work Faster in red and the title is “Quick and Efficient Note Input on Dorico”
This video was made before the recent update that added some Finale-like features. It might help you…Shannon

Christian R, very helpful, especially the videos. My only question would be in the voices, as shown with your colors. But maybe, that just doesn’t matter, since lyrics are handled differently in their attraction to the voices.

sparrish1313, thanks as well. I’ll look for that video.

I am not sure if I understand your question, but in any case: yes the lyrics are attached to the voices:

  • in the upper choir staff: Up-stem Voice 1, Down-Stem voice 1
  • in the lower choir staff: Up-stem Voice 1, Down-Stem voice 1

They are coloured accordingly the Dorico Preferences/Colors where you can see the numbering of the colours (that is different that the numbering of the actual voices in the music, which is much more helpful musically): Here the explanation text except:

Dorico assigns colors to voices based on the order in which they are created for each instrument. For a single-staff instrument, the default ‘Up-stem voice 1’ uses ‘Voice 1. For a grand staff instrument, the default Up-stem voice 1’ on the first staff uses ‘Voice 1’, and the default ‘Up-stem voice 1’ on the second staff uses ‘Voice 2’ Thereafter colors are assigned in the order in which voices are added to the instrument as a whole. After the first eight voices have been created for an instrument, Dorico will assign colors to further voices automatically.

In D5, this is Edit > Notations > Voices > Change Voice. It’s also in the right-click (context) menu under Voices > Change Voice. But as @Christian_R has explained, you don’t need to do this yourself; Dorico will take care of it for you.