Converting TAB to Extra or Ossia Staff

Dorico
#1

Good morning,

I’m confounded by a desire so simple to conceive but seemingly so difficult to reproduce in Dorico (3.5).

I have a fretted instrument solo part which I have written in notation + tablature. I only really need about 3 bars of the tablature to show how to play a few unintuitive phrases, so I’d like to hide the rest of the tab, which has the knock-on benefit of drastically reducing my page count.

Is there a way to hide or “remove staff” for most of the tablature staff, so I may just display the bits I need?

LATER

Oh dear, things have gone a bit weird:

Here’s an ossia I created for 3 bars, copied the notation to the ossia and changed the ossia clef to TAB to this bemusing effect:

Screenshot 2020-05-25 11.48.26.png
Screenshot 2020-05-25 11.48.26.png860×496 26.1 KB

#2

Ahh, now Dorico (3.5 Mac) is just laughing at me.

Since you cannot create Tablature-based ossias for some reason (although you can, graphically!), I tried duplicating the player, and showed only tablature on the dupe. The Remove Staff signpost simply fails to get rid of the staff at any position:

#3

One thing you could try is give the Player 2 instruments, one showing TAB and the other not.

EDIT: Scratch that. Dorico lumps them together by Player.

#4

Thanks Craig, actually I have a version of that going, but the Remove Staff function seems broken in 3.5 with the addition of the Manual Staff Visibility thing, which also doesn’t quite nail what I’m trying to do, as it forces system breaks where they are inconvenient/unsightly in my case.

#5

Unfortunately there’s really no way to do this at the moment. If tablature shows up, it shows up everywhere the corresponding notation shows up.

#6

Thanks Daniel. Can you confirm that “Remove Staff” is broken in 3.5? Because one should be able to make a separate player, put that player into TAB-only mode, then remove all bars of staff (by sliding the signposts) until all are gone but the bars I need, no?

I have not in any way been able to get Remove Staff to work. After invoking the command, I get a signpost that says, “-1 staff” or something, but nothing ever goes away.

#7

It’s certainly not broken, no. Try using it on an instrument with multiple staves, like a piano. Or add an extra staff to a single-staff instrument like a flute, and then remove it again. But don’t do it on a guitar: tablature isn’t truly a separate staff (indeed, I will never describe tablature as even being a “staff” as tablature and staff notation are separate things).

#8

Okay then, this is a limitation. I think Extra Staves and Ossias should have the option to become tablature. It’s currently able to fake you out to look like it works. Try it yourself: if you create an ossia, like I did, you can graphically tell it that it has become tablature by selecting a TAB clef, yet it shows music notation and doesn’t change the amount of lines required.