Former Finale user; I always use single-staff keyboard parts (lead sheet style) – piano, organ, synth – and have read several feeds suggesting how to do that, but none of them seem to apply directly to Dorico Pro 6. Any advice on how to remove the bass staff from the Grand Staff that is automatically created when adding a keyboard part? And how to save a Template with that formatting so I don’t have to do this every time I create a new keyboard part? Much appreciated
Create a new Instrument with only one stave.
Library>Instruments… Duplicate the existing Piano and change the number of staves to suit your need.
When you create a new score, it will show up in the Instrument selector and you can save it as your own custom project templates.
2 Likes
Welcome to the forum, @alexajcable!
In a new project, you can go to Library > Instruments, and find the piano (or organ, or…) instrument. Scroll down to the Staves and Clefs section, and set Number of Staves to 1.
Now you can go to File > Save as Project Template to save as a template, which you can then use to create new projects.
Another approach would be to go to Library > Instruments, find the piano instrument, and click the New Variant from Selection button.
Fill in the Variant Name field with something like “1 staff”, and then click the Edit Instrument Names button to change the full name back to just “Piano”. Scroll down to Staves and Clefs and change the number of staves to 1.
Now click the Save as Default star.
And then OK to close the dialog.
Now when you go to the instrument picker to add an instrument, you’ll see your 1 staff variant.
Because you saved this instrument as a default, it will be available in every new project you create.
3 Likes
Hello Janus and Asherber,
Thanks for your assistance! I have created single-staff variants of all required keyboards (and can do so again as required), and set them as default selections.
However, before I save this format as a new Template, I need to sort out a couple of Audio/MIDI playback issues. Again, my configuration does not seem to behave like the tutorials I have tried to emulate. I apologize if this should be in another feed, as it is somewhat unrelated.
I have a basic Setup with Bb Trumpet, Alto Sax, Trombone, Electric Guitars 1 and 2, Organ, and Piano (which I essentially use as a Lead sheet). I understood that the Play tab should allow me to:
a. select appropriate sounds in HALion Sonic for these instruments (i.e. change the ones that are not genre appropriate); and
b. allow me to hear those sounds (audition parts, rehearse lines, etc.) when playing my MIDI keyboard before selecting Note Entry .
At the moment, neither of those things is happening. For example, when I select the new Piano track (i.e. my new 1 staff) in the Play tab, is says 02 - HALion Sonic, Port 1, Ch 12. But when I select the curly-E on that or any other track, it opens a Garriton for Finale window with 3 grand pianos in the first 3 slots? I may have done something untoward when I was trying to replace the oooh-ah lead sheet voice sound with a grand piano using a YouTube tutorial. How can I restore the original HALion sound set, and audition those sounds? And then get those sounds to play on MIDI activity?
The first thing to try to get playback onto an even keel is to choose Play > Playback Template and re-apply the Auto playback template.
2 Likes
Thanks, that did restore the defaults, and I was able to change a couple of sounds. Is there a more efficient way of auditioning different sound choices? For example, I soloed the organ, played the track, and selected curly-E. It brought up the sound list, and I could select different sounds, but the patch would not change until I stopped and re-started the play function. That seemed odd to me.
Solved; I found a setting in Audi Midi Setup that had changed to a default (/) and when I corrected that it works as expected.