Change the size of one section of one staff

Dorico
#1

I’m trying to put together an aural worksheet for a class at the moment, and I want to increase the size of one specific section of a staff (e.g. in just one system), so it’s bigger for students to write in, and smaller when it’s just for reference. I couldn’t see a way of doing this, as the options I found either resize the individual staff all the way through, or resize all staves for a specific portion.

So then I looked at creating an additional staff at a different size, and then hiding the unnecessary staff when not in use using the ‘hide/show empty staves’. Is there there a way to override the global setting here and show one portion even though its empty?

I’d appreciate any thoughts on how to achieve this.

#2

Put a System Break at the start of the staff. Select that system break and look for its Space Size property. Type a larger value into that property than what’s set in Layout Options > Page Setup > Space Size. Then apply another System Break at the start of the next system, with that property set to whatever is in Layout Options.

Note that the Space Size property defaults to 1.75mm (or the equivalent in whatever unit of measurement you’re using) which may or may not be the layout’s global Space Size.

#3

This is indeed how I’d go about it. Just do a manual staff visibility change at that one spot.

#5

@pianoleo: Doesn’t this change the size of all staves within that portion though? I only want to resize 1 of 4 staves.

#6

I just tested this, and yes. There’s no way to change the staff size where there is a staff visibility change. And putting staff breaks before and after with “reset” selected doesn’t influence staff size. You’ll need to use another stave.

#7

In that case you probably will need an entirely separate instrument, though it may be held by the same player.

#8

I’ll make this an official [Feature Request] then: that we also have the option to change stave sizes where we put staff visibility overrides.

#9

Okay, this works. I was a bit confused by the operation of manual staff visibility, but it’s working now. Thanks.

#10

Are we talking about changing staff size on the same line (system) or changing the staff size in subsequent (or one) system?

An image would help.

#11

@colin_broom another thought occurred to me:
You could create a blank instrument with the stave size you want and then dot it around multiple places via music frames.

#12

Was talking about changing staff size at the start of a new system, not partway across a system. Got it working however with a bit of jiggerypokery.