Scoring for orchestra - best practices

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Maryk4music
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Post by Maryk4music » Mon Jun 05, 2017 11:12 pm

I'm working on my second arrangement for choir and orchestra and would love some input from the forum
on the best way to deal with parts, particularly multiple voices on the same staff.

I've found that if the rhythms are the same, my full score is cleaner when I keep both parts in the same layer with shared stems.
Of course, once I extract parts, I have to manually delete notes so that each player (example Flute 1 and Flute 2) has only his/her notes.
Generally, I extract the Flute staff, then save it as Flute 1 and delete the Flute 2 notes, then save the Flute staff as Flute 2 and reverse the process.
I do my page formatting on the Flute staff, so I don't have to do it for each part. Any time saving suggestions here?

If I use separate layers with stems pointing in opposite directions, the score can get pretty crowded and seems harder for the conductor to read.
The more scores I look at, the more I see shared stems used for parts where the rhythms match.
Perhaps some orchestras share notes on the same page, but the one I'm working with does not.

Another option I considered was creating a separate staff for each instrument and setting each to the same position on the page.
That way each part would be extracted independently and each instrument could have it's own channel and sound.
Has anyone tried this? Any other suggestions?


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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Jun 06, 2017 1:55 am

I put the two instruments on different staves, make the parts from those (I don't extract), then combine them onto one staff for the purpose of the score. You can suppress the originals so they don't show in the score. There are plug-ins that will do the combining.

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N Grossingink
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Post by N Grossingink » Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:39 am

Maryk4music wrote:Of course, once I extract parts, I have to manually delete notes so that each player (example Flute 1 and Flute 2) has only his/her notes.
There is a plugin included with Finale that automates this process. Go to the Plugins menu, then to the TG Tools folder and find "Process Extracted Parts". To use the plugin, extract the Flute 1, 2 stave and duplicate the file. Open the first file (Flute 1) and run the plugin, telling it to extract voice 1. To process the Flute 2, open the second file and extract voice 2. If you extract parts, this is the way to go.

You might want to investigate using linked parts rather than extracting. I think the benefits are self evident. You can still use common stems on 2 part staves and use the "voicing" feature to break them into individual parts. If your scoring is relatively straightforward, this should work out just fine.

N.
N. Grossingink
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Maryk4music
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Post by Maryk4music » Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:44 pm

Thanks for the suggestions. I am looking forward to checking out the plug in.

maryK

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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Thu Jun 08, 2017 6:53 pm

There used to be a plug-in, still is for 2014.5, that allowed you to delete outer notes. Either upper or lower or inner for than matter, but Jari has not yet set it to Fin25 as far as I know. I used it constantly and I still do but I have to go back to 2014.5.
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michelp
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Post by michelp » Fri Jun 09, 2017 10:31 am

JW Staff Polyphony does what you describe, and it is available for Finale 25.
Michel
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Fri Jun 09, 2017 1:08 pm

The 'old' one I like was JW Chord Manager. I don't think he has upgraded it?
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michelp
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Post by michelp » Fri Jun 09, 2017 1:15 pm

JW Staff Polyphony includes all the functions of the old JW Chord Manager under the "Chord Lines" section.
Michel
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ebiggs1
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Post by ebiggs1 » Fri Jun 09, 2017 1:18 pm

Thanx, I will give it a try, ASAP. :D
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Christopher Smith
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Post by Christopher Smith » Fri Jun 09, 2017 7:13 pm

It sounds like you don't know about voiced linked parts.

You can have your flute 1 and 2 on the same staff in the score, and set the Flute 1 part to only use the top note when they share a stem, or use Layer 1 when there are two layers. Then set Flute 2 to use the SAME score staff, but only the bottom note when they share a stem and Layer 2 when there are two layers.

There are some problems with this, though.

You have to choose EITHER all notes on one stem, or two different layers in each measure. You can't mix inside the same measure. This isn't a deal-breaker for me, but you have to know it.

Sometimes you have to manage which layer expressions attach to, when they have to be different. You might have to duplicate or hide some slurs as well (easy to do, but it has to be managed).

If you have one instrument soloing, you have to remember to put whole rests in the other layer in the score, then in the part you have to create and assign a staff style ONLY to that part to hide the real rests so that they will turn into multi measure rests.

Cues are a complete, unmanageable kludge, because they have to appear in layers other than 1 or 2, which means they don't show up in parts but DO show up in the score, which is completely backwards! This reason alone causes some people to have two different files, one for the score and one for all parts on separate staves—still linked, but not linked to the score file.

Grace notes in voiced linked parts are too close to the notes in the parts. This means that you have to extract JUST those parts, which ruins the whole idea of linked parts. This is a bug that they haven't addressed in ten years.
Finale 2014.5 and v.25 on Mac OS 10.12.6 (Sierra)

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