5 lines staff to 3 lines staff

[leonthepeon]

Hello,

I’m looking for solution for my problem. I want to convert 5 staff line to 3 staff line. Only solution i’ve found so far is changing instrument and give other 3 staff line. But what i want is the “outer” lines to be visible, not the inner. I post pictures of what i managed to get and what i want to achieve. Is there a way to space those line and not destroy other staff setup?

[leonthepeon]

This is what i want to have.

[Christian_R]

Hi @leonthepeon , and welcome to the Forum!

Maybe you can look at this thread for a couple of ideas on how to do this.

And here some explanation for your case:

Dorico file:

three lines.dorico (933 KB)

Result:

• create percussion kit with three instruments (I used Anvil) positioned on lines 4, 0, -4 , in the same player of your treble staff

• edit the Instrument definition for the kit (clicking on the three little dots, in Setup Mode) and choose Invisible clef

• Set in Layout options/Players/Percussion, the view as Grid

• Set the engraving options as in the pictures.

• Use hidden clef when your treble instrument is coming back.

• you can give the instrument changes label a custom label containing only a space, to hide them

[leonthepeon]

Thank you!

[lorenzopagliei]

@Christian_R

you can give the instrument changes label a custom label containing only a space, to hide them

Hi @Christian_R ,
two questions:

1. I’m just a beginner here, so where I can find the “instrument changes label” to set it as a space to hide it?

2. From what I see from the “Edit Instrument Definition” window, your “Percussion (1 line kit)” is not a Percussion Kit (I don’t se the “Edit Percussion Kit…” button ). What’s going on?
   Thanks in advance

[Christian_R]

Hi @lorenzopagliei

@lorenzopagliei

where I can find the “instrument changes label” to set it as a space to hide it?

1. this is a property that you can see in engrave mode, for the selected Instrument Change Label. I made ashort video to explain this:
   CleanShot 2024-09-04 at 21.54.10 · CleanShot Cloud

@lorenzopagliei

your “Percussion (1 line kit)” is not a Percussion Kit (I don’t se the “Edit Percussion Kit…” button ).

2. The name of the instrument that you see clicking on the Instrument Definition (Perc. Kit 1-line), was the original one: I started with adding this instrument from the picker, but then I added more instruments to this kit. Now the percussion kit instrument is called Percussion in Setup. In my example, posted in my post above, you have a player holding a generic “treble staff” and a percussion kit (always showing in green), that has 3 Anvil instruments in it: here a short video showing that (opening Edit Percussion Kit…).:
   

[lorenzopagliei]

Thank you @Christian_R !
So from what I see in your video there is no default option not to display staff labels (and I understand this of course).
Speaking in a more general sense, I was among the first users, years ago, to raise the question of the number of lines in a musical staff. I have since seen many other users working in contemporary music, and not only, pointing to this question.
You can find the original post here:

Staff styles

Hi Daniel, Thank you for your welcome. Sorry for not answering yet. I did’t receive a notification of all the answer. Generally, in contemporary music a lot of situations ask for a dynamic change in staff lines number in one instrument staff. For example changing from a “pitched behavior” to an “unhitched behavior”. Or to play in a specific range giving the shape of the gesture (because in these cases it’s simply useless to indicate pitches). Some examples: in strings you can use a 5 lines s…

Today, the “Instrument definition window” covers part of this problem, but it is still limited. For example:

1. lines can only be spaced one space apart;
2. barlines cannot be set individually for each instrument.