I find myself often using slash regions in percussion parts but wishing, for convenience sake, that they played back exactly like bar repeat regions—i.e. simply repeat the previous 1 or 2 or 4 bars.
(I know I can put music “under” slash regions in order to have playback, but that can get unwieldy if you’re wanting to make, say, a small change to a given groove. Also aware I could just use bar repeat regions and be done with it, but I want the players to know they have some freedom to deviate from a given pattern.)
Obviously there are many cases where one would not want this to be the case—a soloist or a pianist comping chords—but there are enough times where I do want it to be the case that I wonder if an option to enable this functionality would make sense?
Another solution might be to have a bar repeat region be able to be hidden under a slash region. But that might open a different can of worms
With manual staff visibility in Dorico Pro 5, one can create a separate playback staff (including measure repeats) and then configure the visible staff any way one wants.
Hadn’t thought of this, @Derrek—thanks. Hidden playback-only staves would be very powerful, but much more complicated than what I’d love, which is just a switch in Slash Region properties labeled “Repeat bars on playback” or something, plus a selector for 1/2/4 bars.
Conceptually this makes sense to me as well, as slash regions in, say, a drum set part mean “keep doing what you’re doing”.
If you’re mainly needing this for drum parts, I use bar repeats, consolidate them in layout options (not at the computer right now - but from memory, I think it’s in the Players section), then hide the repeat marker by changing the alpha channel to 0. I’ve created a paragraph style that makes a boxed text that erases the background that I write ‘Play n’ with and position it over the middle of the bar.
That way, whatever is playing the bar before the repeats carries on playing… Obviously, this doesn’t work for harmony instruments or with 2 and 4 bar (or longer) grooves…
Once you get used to the process it’s not too involved, you can select all the consolidated repeat bars all at once when you’re setting the alpha channel to hide them together (I tend to put the play n text in first so I get the numbers right!)
It’s an old technique from the days of hand copying and I’m not sure how ‘correct’ it is these days but from my discussion with drummer friends they’d rather see that than pages of % signs…
