Is it possible to have a layout that has a player showing for a section of the flow and then another section of the same flow hides that player and shows a different player on the same staff line? Basically a layout that shares two players on one stave, not necessarily at the same time…somehow… ??
This resembles the as yet unsupported feature of dynamically combining e.g. 2 (or more) flute parts on 1 staff, as normally seen in orchestral scores.
Question: do the players never play together? Then just use an instrument change, and instruct the musicians it’s actually for two people (or leave it to them to decide).
Otherwise, create a ‘fake’ third player that combines all music from both ‘real’ parts in one staff. Dorico 2 can do that with the Reduce command. Then, use either the 2 separate staves or the combined staff in your full score and/or part layout. Drawback: changes/corrections have to be made twice.
Or maybe try the cueing mechanism. Insert one of the parts as an extended cue, hiding the rests of the other part and adjusting the cued noteheads to normal size (is that even possible?, can’t check right now, not @computer).
I need to learn more about the cueing features.
So basically what I am wanting to do is to use one flow to compose a cue. During the composition process I will usually start with a piano version. Later I may expand to a “sketch” which has piano and some other key instruments on a reduced number of staves. In theory I could pass a sketch to an arranger who would expand the sketch into a full score. A sketch simply labels sections of music as being this instrument or that and contains the phrases played by these instruments. I might also want to have chord symbols and/or functional analysis on the sketch as I’m composing, that will not appear on the final score.
So basically it would be cool if I could somehow use layouts to determine how the flow is being presented, as a piano only, piano with chords, sketch with or without chords, or the final full score.
Maybe this is a pipe dream. Just thinking out loud about the composing and arranging process I go through. I usually work out timecode tempo and meter stuff in piano only mode, but the sketch form is very useful while working that out and thinking of initial ideas about orchestration. I may know that i need or want a horn to okay something key etc but will not necessarily be arranging every part yet. So it would be really helpful to somehow be able to add to the flow incrementally with these reduced views of it, reductions are easier to see more music on one page and get the big picture in terms of harmony and melody happening and the timecode challenges; with the potential to hand a “sketch” to an arranger or if not the simply make a new layout for full score and continue the arranging process myself.
All the while being able to use note performer to hear what I’m doing 
It seems that using multiple layouts for the different formats would do most or all of what you want, especially if your sketch layout hid empty staves.
still learning my way around Dorico. Will the staff hiding feature leave the staff hidden except for systems where there is music? I think this will still not result in a very good “sketch” print out, but I will play around with it once I figure out how to do it. I notice also there is an “instrument change” and wondering if that can be used…
There is a difference between (intermittently) hiding staves in systems where a player has rests only, and simply not including the player in the layout at all. You can have as many sketch player/staves as you like, without ever exposing them to the public.
Instrument changes are intended for players doubling on another instrument, e.g. flute/piccolo. These instruments share the same staff, and are always in the same part. Which you may of may not include in any layout…
I understand how the layouts work basically, but that doesn’t really solve the challenge… thanks though. I guess the only way to do it is to notate the sketch separately and copy the music over to the final staves later.
I guess the change instruments is the way to handle sketches in general. I can create virtual players that are whatever combinations of instruments I want to use on that staff, and in write mode it shows them as separate staves, but the printout will share them all on a single staff. But ultimately in order to produce the real true score I will have to copy those parts over to proper player staves… I can’t see any way to have that music in only one place in the flow and shown differently per layout with the sketch view vs normal full score. Its something though to still be able to work on the sketch within the same flow and just hide those virtual players from the final full score…
By the way how do you intermittently hide staves? The only thing I can find is the option to hide empty staves, but I read that to mean that if there is a single note anywhere on the player in question, then the staff will be shown in all systems. Is there a way to hide the staff only for specific systems which lack notes?
Hide empty staves does exactly that : hide empty staves in all the systems where, otherwise, the staff would only be populated with rests. I do not understand how you can think it works in another way… What’s your experience with that setting? (Note that Layout options are layout dependant : you must make sure you select the appropriate layout in the left panel of that options window)
Please be patient with me, I’m learning Dorico… will try it tonight…
My wording regarding ‘intermittently hiding’ was unclear: it’s not something you decide on a staff-by-staff basis, Dorico does that for you (following your preferences).
got it. Well this will kind of work. I will not be able to produce a sketch print copy that is really ideal to give out honestly, but its something to try working with for sure in terms of having more systems appearing per page without empty staves while I’m working through the composition and arrangement.
so in case anyone from Steinberg is listening, My ideal scenario would be that the flows would be a bit more separated from the actual notational representation. Each and every instrument needs to have its own “track” or “part”, for lack of a better word, which has the notes for that “part”, regardless of which player is going to play it, or which staff we want it printed on.
For the notational representation, determined mainly by the layout, we decide which staff will show the instrument. Perhaps this is where the player association also would happen. Multiple instruments could share a staff and a staff could have instrument changes partway through the flow. And I could have different layouts that display the same “part” in various different ways. The two obvious ways are as full score or as a part sheet. But where it kind of breaks down in my mind is the ability to put multiple parts on a single staff or change which parts are displayed on a particular staff at some point in the flow for that layout, all of which would make it very easy to have very configurable condensed views of the music as we work.
In the meantime, I see that I can hide empty staves, which is not elegant at all, but can at least hide a lot of empty bars. I can see that I can produce a flow which has a virtual player that changes instruments in order to use one staff for different instruments to produce a sketch print copy, but that is kind of kludgy and as far as I can see I will end up having to copy and paste the notes from there to a separate player/instrument later for the final full score.
just some thoughts…
I am really liking the flow/layout concept in general though, just hope it can be improved a bit.
Perhaps it would help us if you could print out some short examples (screenshots) of what these various layouts of your are supposed to look like. I think we are pretty much stumbling blindly in the dark trying to figure out what you are aiming for.
At this point I am looking for a work flow that can take me through stages of music development without rework if possible. I think I explained it already above. I can use any one of half a dozen notational products I already own to get whatever I want it to look like, the question is how much manual work will be required to do it. Anyway, sorry I do not have anything handy I can send you about what a typical “sketch” would look like, on its way to becoming a full score. I will try to see if I can locate some examples, including from other people.
I don’t think there is much more to say on this topic at this point.