How to dovetail parts?
Moderators: Peter Thomsen, miker
-
finalizer
- Posts: 130
- Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 9:29 am
- Finale Version: Finale v. 27.4.1.146
- Operating System: Mac
I have two clarinets on one staff. At some point they need to separate on two staves and then come back to one staff. How do I do this while maintaining consistency of extracted parts?
Mac mini M1 \ MacOS 14.4.1 \ Finale 27.4.1
-
motet
- Posts: 8274
- Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:33 pm
- Finale Version: 2014.5,2011,2005,27
- Operating System: Windows
What I do is give each instrument its own staff and make the parts from those. That way you have exact control over what the part looks like. Have a third staff for showing both clarinets on on the same staff. So you have three staves, Clarinet 1, Clarinet 2, and Clarinets.
Use JW staff polyphony to combine Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2 onto Clarinets where you want them to appear combined. Use the Hide Staff and Collapse staff style to hide Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2 in these spots. Where the clarinets each get their own staff in the score, you can leave Clarinets blank and hide it either with that same staff style or with Hide Empty Staves. Do this after you've entered all the music in Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2.
The disadvantage of this is that you sometimes have the same music appearing in both the single clarinet parts and in the combined staff, so if you make a change you must do it in both places. But if you've finished writing your piece and have waited until the end to create the Clarinets staff, this shouldn't be much of a problem.
The advantage is that the alternative to doing it this way, the Voiced Parts feature, is rather half-baked. One example is writing cues, which may be different for each instrument, but I've seen people here posing other dilemmas from time to time.
Anyway, that's what I would do.
Use JW staff polyphony to combine Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2 onto Clarinets where you want them to appear combined. Use the Hide Staff and Collapse staff style to hide Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2 in these spots. Where the clarinets each get their own staff in the score, you can leave Clarinets blank and hide it either with that same staff style or with Hide Empty Staves. Do this after you've entered all the music in Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2.
The disadvantage of this is that you sometimes have the same music appearing in both the single clarinet parts and in the combined staff, so if you make a change you must do it in both places. But if you've finished writing your piece and have waited until the end to create the Clarinets staff, this shouldn't be much of a problem.
The advantage is that the alternative to doing it this way, the Voiced Parts feature, is rather half-baked. One example is writing cues, which may be different for each instrument, but I've seen people here posing other dilemmas from time to time.
Anyway, that's what I would do.
