Add an extra stave below piano?

I’m engraving a piece that has 3 piano staves. (Liszt.) I’ve already written a load of music in the 2-stave instrument.

If I Add a Staff Below, it appears between the two existing ones, even if I select the lower staff. This would be fine, except that lots of the detail I’ve already written gets lost when I paste upwards: arpeggio rolls, cross staff notes, voicing(!) etc.

If I create an Ossia, that creates a grand staff. Converting the instrument to a 3-staff Organ doesn’t seem to add an extra staff either?

Am I just going to have to adjust everything again, or is there a better way?

There seems to be a bug at play.

I just created a new project, added a piano, put in a few dummy notes and then attempted to add staves. If I click on a note in the top stave and select “add stave below” I get one in the middle. If I click on a note in the bass/left-handed stave I get an additional line BELOW the grand staff just as expected (and as you also want.). see img 1

I also tested only adding one stave below the bass stave (just in case experiment A only added a line below after there was an additional stave in the middle) and it too worked perfectly. img 2


I’d double check that you are a.) clicking on the right stave and b.) clicking the correct above or below.

Any chance this is an older file being worked on in the newer version of D? I wonder if there is a legacy glitch.

I think it’s a case of needing to select something explicit - basically anything apart from an implicit rest. (From memory; I’m not in front of Dorico right now)

And for safety, probably don’t select a note that’s cross-staffed from another stave.

Could be. I clicked on a note in a respective stave each time.

EDIT: if you don’t click on anything the contextual menu is greyed out so that can’t be the cause.

Yes! Bingo. There was nothing in the first bar. Selecting an actual note works.

Yeah, it can’t be selecting the stave rather than an object on it, as the signpost has to have a specific rhythmic location.

edit: that was to Romanos.

Ben, another reminder that implicit rests in Dorico are placeholders; they’re not real. You can’t use them to W between part and score, you can’t use them for this, and IIRC you can’t use them as a zooming focal point. And probably some other things too…

It didn’t work selecting a whole bar of notes, either!

No, because it has to have a specific rhythmic location, just like an immediate dynamic!