Tim
On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 03:02 PM, Craig Parmerlee wrote:
This may be a message mainly for Tobias, as part of it seems to relate to TGTools Smart Explosion. But I'd appreciate hearing ideas from across the board.
I want to know how others approach organizing the instruments on their scores. I have done mainly small ensembles in the past. In that case, it isn't bad to give each instrument its own staff in the score. When I'm done, I simply do a full extraction and then do any necessary final editing on the extracted parts. I assume this is a very typical practice. (I used to fiddle around with Special Part Extraction, but rarely use that these days.)
So far so good. Right now I'm working on an orchestration for full symphony orchestra + jazz combo + several other instruments not normally in an orchestral score. I set this up as usual, with each instrument having its own staff. I did that so I could easily do an extraction where each player gets his or her own music without any confusing divisi bits. As a musician, I absolutely abhor those combined parts, and I vow never to put any other musicians through that unless the divisi is a very small percentage of the part.
This is all fine except for one problem. The score is enormous. I can blow it up to make it legible enough for the conductor, or I could invest in a large format printer. But still, there are too many lines to make the score really useful. I think what I would like to do is to combine the same-family instruments (all the trumpets on one staff, e.g.). But I insist that each trumpeter (e.g.) gets only his/her own part.
I'm looking for the best practices here. As I understand the standard Finale extraction, the best Finale will do is extract a part with all three trumpets on the same staff. It looks like TGTools Smart Explosion could then split that combined trumpet part into three separate staffs. And then I could do another Finale extraction to break that apart into three separate trumpet parts. Is that correct? And is that the best way to accomplish the task? Is there any way to avoid that extra editing/extraction step?
And if I go the two-step approach with TGTools, would I be smart to enter each trumpet part to a separate layer, or is that not really necessary? (I'd rather just lay everything onto layer 1 if there is no reason to do otherwise.)
OK, now for bonus points. I already have this humungous score with everything on its own staff. Is there a good way to go about combining the family-related staves? I can use the piano reduction plug-in. That might work OK as long as all the parts are moving together (vertically), but with moving voices, it seems like I really need each voice to go to its own layer, otherwise the TGTools Smart Explosion may never put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
It seems like what I really need is a "smart implosion" that is the reverse of TGTools Smart Explosion.
I'd appreciate any advice here.
Thanks, Craig
_______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
_______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
