Dorico 4 wish list: Focus Panel

A feature request: when working with large-ensemble scores in Galley View, it would be great to be able to toggle visibility of certain staves/groups on the fly to focus on specific aspects of composition, e.g., chord voicing, doubling, etc. I know I can create a custom layout, but why do that for something you might only need for a few minutes?

Would something like this be possible: a “focus” sub-panel, available from the left panel, containing checkboxes for each instrument (and maybe group), allowing the user to check-toggle staves as needed. Even better would be the visible staves respacing when a staff is hidden!

Being me, I made a mockup… I’d love to know others’ thoughts (including, of course, the dev team).

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This has definitely been requested before a few times. I do rather like your mockup, however. Seems an elegant solution.

Ditto. Cubase has a visibility panel where you can select/deselect any track. You can do the same for folders containing multiple tracks. Folders are able to collapse or expand with one click. This makes it easy to control visibility with long lists of instruments.

It would be great if such a panel could toggle between players and layouts so you could in fact use your layouts but select/deselect them easily on the fly.

+1
this is a nice idea. Even better if the panel could detach and be moved to another monitor.

I think better to be able to create multiple staff sets, as in Finale and Overture, and be able to hotkey between them.

I think you can do that already with different layouts and tabs. I think the advantage here is not bothering with the static layouts.

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+1 For such improvement ! :slight_smile:

Maybe with a mute checkbox by each too!

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I would presume that there would be an option to only hear those instruments that you are focusing on. Selective muting is already available through the mixer.

I am really hoping for something like this, with options to both hear every instrument in the layout as well as only the focused instruments.

That sounds self-contradictory; can you explain a little bit more about your goal?

the hearing is – in my opinion – secondary, but the focus idea gets a +1 from me …

Better yet, create a scripting language that someone could use to implement this idea. :slight_smile:

#thishashappenedbefore

It would be great if the instrument selection could be done by just selecting music on the instruments’ staffs

If you’re referring to me, I would like to have a layout with winds / brass / strings. I’d like to temporarily focus on the horns, and either hear the horns on their own, or in context of the entire ensemble.

So you would want an option to hear it either of two ways. Thank you; that makes it clearer.

+1

Yes, but the interface for a focus panel uses the same track layout as a mixer, only vertically. Given the 1:1 relationship between focus panel track selection and mixer track display, it makes sense to double some common mixer functions on focus panel track selection. Of course with the added bonus of soloing only/all the focused tracks with one click.

Yeah. As thoroughly amazing as this software is, this is the one glaring hole in the application, as far as I’m concerned.

I wouldn’t call it a necessity at this point – Dorico is that capable, now – but an SDK, or at least an API (hopefully not in some proprietary language), would take it to the level of super-usability.

Would it be off topic to extend the same idea to the Play Tab? I’m loving the new CC lanes, but I’m finding it hard to work with related instruments without a lot scrolling up and down - it depends on where the instruments are in relation to each other in the score of course.I’m finding something like a drum set particullarly annoying - I appreciate having a lane for each part of the kit but it ends up being a lot of tracks to have to scroll over. Be nice to limit the instruments in view.

I like having the ability to turn cc lanes on and off, but at times its the piano roll itself that I’d like to hide as it takes the most room.

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