Force Dorico to always display empty measures?

I’m assembling multiple melodies, each currently scored for a different player, into a single longer theme that may be played by one or more players. But when cutting, pasting, or dragging a phrase results in an empty measure, that measure then vanishes from the score. If a player temporarily has no notes for a subset of measures, that player’s staff disappears from that subset. So as I work, measures are constantly disappearing and reappearing. It’s disorienting.

I’d like Dorico to display a static page of staves so that I can move notes around a static display of staves just as I would when working with pencil & eraser on paper. Or when editing a text document in a word processor.

Before anybody suggests the obvious, setting “Consolidate” to “None” in “Layout Options > Players > Bar rests and Multi-bar rests” doesn’t solve the problem. It helps a little, but I’m still being tortured by measures that appear and disappear as I edit. There has to be some other parameter(s) triggering this behavior.

Am I missing something obvious?

Are you referring to the Casting Off? i.e. keeping so many bars in a system and/or frame?

Uh, no. At least I don’t think so.

Here’s a screen shot that shows a simplified example of what’s going on.

In this example, player Dawn does not yet have anything to play in the first five bars. Dorico has hiding those measures for player Dawn. I’d like to move the content of Dawn’s measures 9-11 to measure 1. I’m not sure how to do that because the target measures are hidden. But I’m sure that if I was able to do so, those measures would suddenly pop into the score as soon as they contained any music.

In this simple case, I’d like to convince Dorico to continuously display measures 1-3 for both players, regardless of whether they contain any content?

Another way to explain this is that I want the score to remain static, like a printed page, always displaying, on a particular page, the same # of staves and players in each system and the same # of systems on that page. This is independent of the # of staves specified per frame or system in Casting Off or whether different #s of staves or systems appear on different pages.

I just want every measure for every player to be unhidden all the time. Just like working on paper.

Try this:

I don’t agree. It seems that it is in fact what you are after: a particular number of systems each page:

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Dan:

Great minds think alike. I’d just stumbled upon the “Hide Empty Staves” option under, of all things, “Vertical Spacing” in Layout Options. I think that must be the same function you just linked to in your last posting.

Thanks for your help. I’ve been trying to resolve this for quite a while.

C

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Re: casting off, if I, say, set the # of systems per page to 3, how would that force Dorico to display measures 1-3 for player Dawn in my screenshot? In measures 1-3, wouldn’t Dorico correctly display 3 measures for Trilogy, but none for Dawn?

If you have casting off set to three systems per page (frame), as well as showing empty staves, then there will be six staves on the page (three systems with two players in each).

Galley Mode?

Dan, I don’t think we’re communicating. I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.

Once I tell Dorico not to hide empty staves, I don’t seem to need to do anything else in Casting Off in order to solve my problem.

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Perhaps it will depend on how full each system and frame is. If you have casting off deactivated and you fill up the bars with heaps of material, Dorico will move bars/systems if it needs to. If this doesn’t bother you then it’s all good!

Dan, thanks for the clarification.

I think this particular problem is solved.

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It’s worth saying that Dorico doesn’t hide systems by default, so you must have turned that on yourself at some point!

Doesn’t Dawn read bass clef…?