Explode function, and a Copy Voices request

• Aug 23, 2025 - 19:09

I'll start by describing how Finale does it, which I know you all hate, but it will help...

My old workflow: I scan a piece of choral music. Assume, for now, that sopranos and altos share a staff, often with unison notes, and occasional splits into S and A. I run that through SmartScore 64 Pro for recognition, correct the inevitable errors, and export into Finale. In Finale, I will separate the voices onto individual staves. For this, I use the plugin JW Staff Polyphony, which works just like MSS's Explode function, with one important difference: it has a checkbox to "treat single notes as unison," which puts those unison notes on the second staff, as well. MSS can't do that. Single notes don't copy in the explode.

So that's a first feature request.

This could be worked around (although with a fair bit of extra work) if the Tools > Voices function could include a Copy Voices, as well as the Swap. Then, I could copy the single line voice into the other, and the explode would work the way I want it to.

That's my second request. And truthfully, the first one would eliminate the second, although that would be helpful, as well. Comments? Questions? Workarounds?


Comments

So, Finale didn't do this out of the box. It was through a later added plugin. Maybe someone needs to write such a plugin.
In your example, are most of the notes split with an occasional unison section or few notes? If that's the case, you probably already know a work around.

In reply to by mikey12045

So Finale still works? Just no updates? My copy of Sibelius is from 2017. It's the last version before they went the subscription route. Still works great. There are many things about the UI that I much prefer. But the sounds are a bit dull in some cases. And since I write for playback.....
MU4 and Sibelius on the same computer.

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