Finding Orphan Notes

Dorico
1

There are a couple of ways notes can ‘go missing’ from a score.

  1. Inserting a divisi change mid-system when there is already a divisi in force.
  2. Creating a divisi, entering some notes, and removing the divisi again.

The second one is something I’ve done by accident. It’s not likely to be something done intentionally.

Dorico will continue to play back the invisible notes. These points are both known to the Dorico team, so I’m not trying to start a debate on rights and wrongs!

I decided to search a score systematically for these notes. I thought I’d post here how I did it, both to share what I did if it’s helpful, and to learn about better methods from forum experts. It picks up both problems in one go.

So, the steps are, in a copy of the project file:

  1. Lock the Full Score layout.
  2. Turn off condensing
  3. Select and Delete all notes in page view
  4. Look for any notes left in the Play editor.

I put steps 1 and 2 in because the ‘Select All’ in step 3 does not select condensed notes.

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2

You can also find deleted staves (that may contain notes) less destructively by comparing the staves listed in Manual Staff Visibility with those displayed in galley view.

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Yes, I for one would be nervous about deleting everything in page view, though my performers and listeners might prefer that!

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4

Ah, yes, that’s why I took a copy of the project first and worked on that. I felt exactly the same.

I’ve highlighted that in my original post.

5

We do plan to add some ways to work with extra staves, including allowing you to remove them, or to show them in the places where they have music that cannot currently be seen. I’m not sure when we’ll actually get to implementing this, but it’s something we have spoken about in the team and it’s on our backlog.

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6

Thanks Daniel.