Hi All - kind of stuck.
I already have almost completed a large project where I have three instrumentalists changing instruments between flows.
I realize now that I should have set this up at the very beginning of the project
Now I already have separate parts - as many as 7 parts that will just be played by 3 people. Is there any easy way to contain the existing parts with the 3 players without pasting everything in? Thanks in advance…
You want to redistribute the instruments you currently have being held by seven players into just three players? It should be as simple as switching to Setup mode, and expanding the cards corresponding to each player in the Players panel on the left-hand side so that you can see the individual instruments held by each one. Now drag the instruments from the current players to the players you want them to be held by.
You can also assign multiple players to the same part layout, so that each of the 3 instrumentalists can see all the music that they need to. You’re not limited to one player = one part: Dorico is much more flexible than that 
Thanks - I’ll try it!
-John
Thanks you Daniel and Lillie.
This is obviously a very powerful feature in Dorico, but I find the UI to be counter-intuitive. Perhaps that can be improved at some point. I’m running into problems when, after adding multiple instruments to a single player, they disappear from the score. If there is a really good tutorial video on working with this feature, please send a link.
Thanks in advance,
John
When a Player holds multiple instruments, only the current one he is playing is being displayed in page view. You can change that in Layout Options, by disallowing instrument changes.
In any case galley view always shows all the instruments held by one player.
Thanks, but this does not solve the problem of the instruments disappearing from the score.
I can change the list order of the multiple instruments by dragging, but then this affects all of the flows inn my project!
Perhaps there could be a setting that allows instruments held by a single player to be shown in one flow, and then hidden in another.
-John
I am not sure I understand your issue. Do you want to always show all the instrument a player holds? Then you should deactivate the Layout-Option to allow instrument changes, as I suggested. Instruments shouldn’t disappear from the score after you deactivatet that setting. (Before they obviously “disappear”, but a quick view into galley view should confirm to you, that they still exist.)
If you find that to be the case, maybe uploading a cut down version of the project here would be best.
If you are showing all the instruments held by a player, your best current bet would probably be using manual staff visibility.
Thanks, but “manual staff visibility” seems like going back to Sibelius, which I used for 20 years. That can be my “fallback” setting, but there might be another way. If anyone has a video tutorial link on this, that would be helpful. This might be improved in future versions of Dorico… perhaps a multi-dimensional array can be substituted for the current list of instruments held by a player.
Again, if you need more specific help, please provide a project and/or describe your issue more clearly. Why do you need to show multiple instruments of a player? That’s a rather uncommon practice.
Currently there’s no way of hiding single instruments by a player for a specific flow other than manual staff visibility. You only can deactivate the full player from that flow. You could of course create a second player with less instruments and apply this one to the flows where less instruments are needed, but I think that’s more cumbersome than manual staff visibility.
I think the advice in post #2 has led to a lot of unnecessary confusion. Lillie’s method in post #3 is much better for this purpose. If they are not switching within a movement, there was no need to load a player with multiple instruments. Then regular old empty-staff hiding will be sufficient.
I like things the way they are now. At some point folks need to learn the program.
I mean he says the 3 instrumentalists play different instruments in different flows. When the layout options allow for instrument changes to be displayed, there shouldn’t be much to worry about. But at this point it’s just guessing without a sample project.
Hi All - the problem sort of resolved. By unchecking “allow instrument changes” (this is very counter-intuitive, but not as bad as Sibelius), then the changes became visible, but still not in the order of instruments that I wanted. Eventually seeing two instrument parts on one player’s layout, I then went back in to the layout options and re-allowed instrument changes, and that worked. I still think that the UI could be improved in this area. In Sibelius, I would have just made separate files for each movement of my piece. That has its own disadvantages, of course,. Generally Dorico is much better!
We need to see what you’re doing to provide the best help. Dorico’s functionality for instrument changes is pretty straightforward.
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You can always see all staves in galley view. In page view, the staves you see depends on whether instrument changes are allowed and whether instruments held by the same player have any overlapping notes (if they do, all staves with simultaneous notes are shown).
The order of instrument staves in galley view depends on the order they’re listed in in the player’s card in Setup mode.
If you want instruments’ staves to appear in different vertical orders in different flows, you might be better served having separate players, and putting them in separate groups to prevent Dorico numbering them together. Because you can assign any number of players to the same part layout, it doesn’t really matter if one player’s part actually behind-the-scenes includes 15 separate players.
It depends on what you want to achieve. Links with more information about instrument changes and instrument numbering below.
yes, to quote from your post “If you want instruments’ staves to appear in different vertical orders in different flows, you might be better served having separate players, and putting them in separate groups to prevent Dorico numbering them together” - that is what was happening - and what I was trying to avoid… still it would be great if this would become more flexible in future version of the software.