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?
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.):
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.
Thanks, but I still can’t get it to work. Here are my steps:
I created a barbershop score (Tenor, Lead, Baritone, Bass)
in Setup I choose Setup>New Section Player and add a Choir
I select both the Tenor and Lead lines, using Edit>Select to end of Flow, and Copy
I select the first rest in the choir scores and choose Edit>Paste special>Reduce
Nothing happens.
I’ve also tried making a new score that is just the choir and Copy/Pasting between them. Still nothing.
I’ve also tried selecting just the Tenor, select to end, Copy and then in the upper staff of the Choir, Paste Special >Paste into Voice>up Stem Voice 1
Still nothing.
What am I doing wrong?
(Working on a fully updated MacBook Air)
However there is an inconsistency in your treble clef staves. The Tenor staff sounds an octave lower where the Lead staff does not. Therefore the reduced voices are crossed. I recommend to change the Lead also to a Tenor instrument and rename the staff.
Vadian,
Thanks, but I’m still stuck:
The Lead and Tenor lines have the appropriate clef to indicate they should be an ocave lower–in fact, they were set up when I chose the Barbershop template to start.
Second, when I add a Choir line, the Lead moves from the top system to the bottom. (Why would it do that?) I can fix that in Setup by dragging the tab for the lead back to where it belongs (second staff).
But it still doesn’t work when I follow the steps we’ve discusses.
For men’s voices, each music system consists of two staves, one for treble clef with an 8 beneath it (to be read an octave lower than written, for the lead and tenor parts) …
I’m not sure Dorico can format the way I expect–2 voices in the treble staff with stems pointing opposite directions and two in the bass staff similarly. It isn’t something new–Bach did this. I agree that something was messed up with the tenor line created by the barbershop template, but I can’t even cobble this together one voice at a time. e.g. Start with a Choir setup, two staves. Write into the bass staff. Flip the stems up with Edit>Notations>Stem. But now when I try to create a second voice, even though I indicate chords and the orange cue says 2 with a stem-down note next to it, when I start typing in the second voice, all stems flip down on the voice I entered in the measures in which I enter the notes.
It took two days just to get the damn software installed (finally with online tech support–which was excellent) I’ve now spent three more trying to get a simple format that should have been automated in the first place.
You shouldn’t need to manually flip the stems: just use the default Up-stem 1 voice for the Tenor, and a new Down-Stem 1 voice for the Bass. Use the Choir 2-staff instrument, or just a Soprano and Bass pair of staves.
That’s because you had manually flipped them in your step before. Don’t do these kind of manual tweaks, let Dorico do its magic! Input upstem-voice (1), then input downstem-voice (1), presto!
