I set up Engraving Options>Staff Labels to show instrument name only once, where adjacent instruments are identical. In this imported score however, the labels are still not showing consistently. (Among the grouped instruments, only the Tenor Trombones are showing properly.)
French horns traditionally belong neither to the woodwind, nor the brass, and exist in their own limbo between these families of instrument. As such, they do not need a thick brace, but only a sub-group brace. Is there a way of showing a sub-group (same instruments) brace without the thick brace (instrument family)?
Lastly, when writing by hand, I used to use curly brackets for sub-group braces. Can Dorico do this, or is one obliged to use thin square brackets for sub-groups (with curly brackets reserved for 2-handed instruments /instruments with wide ranges needing two staves)?
PS In the above diagrams, Horns should appear in the order 1-3-2-4 of course.
As it’s an imported file, try changing the instruments to what they appear to be, just to make sure they’re being correctly identified as a horn, trumpet etc.
If that doesn’t change anything, try resetting their instrument names or otherwise making sure both the long and short names are exactly the same. Dorico can’t group instrument names if they’re different.
To answer part of my own question, I managed to fix the staff labels not appearing properly by changing the instrument (not player) names from Horn 1, Horn 2, Horn 3 & Horn 4, to:
Horn
Horn
Horn
Horn
…Dorico then numbers the instruments automatically and the duplicate names disappear.
To get the horns into 1-3-2-4 order, just drag the player name in Setup>Players.
If you’re struggling to find answers to these questions searching the manual or online generally, feel free to let me know – it’s always useful to be aware of where reasonable search terms aren’t providing the right results.
