Staves / Voices
I'm contemplating a 6-part vocal a capella piece. This is probably a silly / 'no-brainer' question, but I'm wondering about the differences of doing three staves, two voices each - and two staves, three voices each.
I've done portions of it already (long time ago with a different program) and with three staves per system, it's ten pages long - so one advantage of two staves would be less space used. Still, I feel pretty sure that three staves would work better; I just wanted to get some feedback/opinions on it if I could. Thanks
Comments
I would keep 3 staves with 2 voices. The advantage is that voice 1 will always be stem up and voice 2 stem down as long as you don't change anything. When you add a 3rd voice it may become unclear to the singers who get which notes.
In general I'd go with no more than two voices per stave - the singers will have a hard time sorting out their parts otherwise. Also, page turns aren't nearly as problematic for singers as for instrumentalists. However, if the rhythms of the different parts are practically identical, so it's mostly really just three-note chords rather than anything like rhythmically independent parts, maybe you can get away with combining three voices onto a single staff.
In reply to In general I'd go with no… by Marc Sabatella
The parts would be rhythmically different, for the most part - I totally agree with both of you. Thanks for the input!