Changing instruments held by same player

Sorry but I have forgotten how to do this & can’t find it in the documenatation.

I have a player to whom 2 intruments are assigned (soprano sax & flute). Having been inputting the soprano sax in Write mode I want to change to flute input in the same staff thus invoking the instruction “To Flute” (as is the preferred setting in the Layout options).

But I can’t find out how to do this - scouring through the documentation seems only to tell me how to change the instrument completely in setup mode, which is not what I want to do.

I know it’s easy & straightforward - but I’ve forgotten how to do it!

Your patience is much appreciated!

In Setup mode, add a soprano sax. Then with that player selected, Shift-I to add another instrument to that player. Then the player “holds” both instruments. You’ll see that both instrument cards are inside that player in Setup mode.

Then enter the notes in Galley View, where all staves are visible. The instrument changes will sort themselves out in Page View.

Thank you Dan - that must be one of the fastest replies ever!
It was the use of Galley View that I’d forgotten!

I really wish there was an alternative here. I work in galley view 99% and all the empty staves gets annoying when you have many players with doublings. I wish there was an actual instrument change rather than getting two staves, since the same player isn’t going to be playing more than 1 at a time (absent a very few virtuosos, such as Roland Kirk).

I have a piece in which a player changes instruments between flows. I’ve entered music in Galley View and I get the correct staff name in Page View, but I don’t get a change instrument instruction. I’ve done this before (although perhaps not between flows) but I can’t find a way to make it work now. I spent a lot of time looking through the documentation (as well as on this forum) but it was fruitless. I typed in several search strings like ‘change instrument’, ‘switch instrument’, etc. but the search engine only looked for the separate words, giving me endless, irrelevant finds. I used to be able to type in a search string between quotation marks, but that doesn’t seem to be accepted anymore. Is there another way to do it?

I don’t think you can have an automated instrument change label at the end of a flow. You’ll probably need to use Shift+X text.

I had found the instrument change label at the start of the flow. I was afraid of the lack of an automated instrument change label at the end of flow. I guess I hadn’t tried that yet. It would be a logical thing to implement.
What about typing in search strings of more than one word?

Read the first guideline here: Four simple guidelines to help us help you - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

I very rarely use the forum’s own search. Google custom searches don’t seem to work on mobile devices, so if I’m on my iPhone/iPad I go straight to google and search “what I’m looking for” site:Steinberg.net
95% of the time at least one of the first five results is relevant.

At the moment, there is no look ahead (or indeed look back) from flow to flow when Dorico makes decisions about how the score should be laid out. This may not always be the case – for example, we expect to add some features around “attacca” in the future, which would certainly require Dorico to know what’s about to happen next at the start of the following flow, so it’s not impossible that once we start working on those kinds of features that we could also add automatic instrument change warnings at the end of a flow.

Dumb question: is galley view note entry currently the only way to accomplish instrument changes? (Though I purchased Dorico2 as soon as it came out, life intervened and I’ve only recently been able to install it and get my feet wet. )

I personally can’t stand galley view; switching to it breaks the creative flow for me. I’ve searched the forum and help documentation about this but haven’t had much luck. If a more elegant way of specifying instrument changes is already available, I’d appreciate it if someone could point me to instructions about it.

If galley view is still currently the only way to do this, I’d like to add one more thing to the team’s long list of suggestions/requests to implement someday: entering instrument changes in a manner similar to specifying which voice (or which part of a percussion kit) to enter notes into. I’m picturing something along the lines of: once the caret visible, pressing Shift-I (or up or down arrow) cycles through the instruments the currently-selected player has at their music stand, with the instrument name displayed above the rhythmic grid. (Or it could be an instrument change popover, if preferred. Just anything that allows me to stay in page view!)

Not a dumb question. But the answer is yes, sorry.

Personally, I prefer Galley View for creative work. It’s so much more akin to what the music is doing: one long flow, straight forward! No line breaks, which really have nothing to do with the flow of time in the listener’s perspective. Just my two cents.

Ah, thanks for the quick reply, Dan. I appreciate it.

I’m happy that galley view exists for those who prefer it! I didn’t mention it as any kind of complaint, and it’s nice to hear your reasons why you like it.

I wouldn’t be able to compose Kerouac-style on a giant roll of paper, my brain just isn’t wired that way :slight_smile: For me, pen and (sheets of) paper are the ultimate tools, and the ideal for software to strive to emulate. If I could compose pen-to-paper and have Dorico “looking over my shoulder” to hum it back to me and engrave it all when I took a break … well, that would be just heaven. (Definitely one for the Wishlist of Impossible Things!)

What I usually do is enter everything on the first of the staves (in Page View) and at the very end of the process enter Galley View and move the necessary passages down to the next staff. With Alt-M it’s very quick and easy and I can do it for all multi-instrument players in one go. Especially with large projects I try to minimise switching between modes as it can take a long time.

Note that you could use alt-M even in Page view, provided you “know” that there’s the next instrument below the one you’re dealing with (in the left panel of setup mode), even if it does not show in page view.

What Marc said!

…woah.

…double woah. That is a really wonderful solution for people (like me) who prefer working in page view. Thanks Marc and Leo!

Literally took my breath away to see Leo’s clip of this in action!

Brilliant, Leo and Marc! That’ll save even more time and effort, as I don’t need to toggle back and forth into Galley View at all. Triple woah!