Exploding music onto multiple staves

You can explode music onto more staves than it was originally notated for; for example, to get notes in dense piano chords onto all the woodwind staves quickly.

Prerequisite

You have reset any cross-staff notes to their default staves.

Procedure

  1. In Write mode, select the music you want to explode.
  2. Press Ctrl/Cmd-C to copy the music.
  3. Select the staves onto which you want to explode the selected music.
  4. Choose Edit > Paste Special > Explode. You can also choose this option from the context menu.

Result

The selected music is exploded onto the selected staves. By default, each destination staff receives at least one of the notes in the source chords, allocated from the top selected instrument staff downwards.

  • If the number of notes in the chord matches the number of destination staves, each instrument receives one note.

  • If the number of notes in the chord is less than the number of destination staves, then the same note is allocated to multiple staves. Notations, such as slurs and dynamics, are duplicated to each destination staff.

  • If the number of notes in the chord is more than the number of destination staves, then the notes are spread as equally as possible across the destination staves. If the chord contained an odd number of notes, Dorico Elements prefers to allocate extra notes to the upper staves.