Hello! I like to create jazz and pop arrangements using Dorico, and I recently discovered something very interesting. Let’s say I want to display chord symbols between the two piano staves (instead of above the top piano staff). This is a pretty common engraving choice among jazz pianists and arrangers. The setting I would use to enable this for the Piano Layout is,
Layout Options → Chord Symbols and Diagrams
I would then navigate to “Position of chord symbols on grand staff instruments” and click “Between staves”.
Unfortunately, this setting makes it impossible to hide empty staves in the piano layout, which is problematic. Even if I go to the Layout Options for the piano layout and then go to “Vertical Spacing → Staff Visibility → Hide Empty Staves”, and click “All systems” and enable “Allow individual staves of multi-staff instruments to be hidden”, none of the empty piano staves are hidden. Additionally, even if I go to “manual staff visibility” and toggle “hide” for certain empty staves, nothing happens.
I did manage to figure out a slight workaround, however. If I go to the full score layout and use “Staff → Remove Staff” to remove the empty staves (and then “add staff below” to add them back once the music resumes), it seems to successfully remove empty staves in both the full score layout and the piano layout, despite the chord symbols being in between the staves.
However, I do wish that the “Hide Empty Staves” setting could work on its own when chords are positioned between piano staves. This would prevent the need for the “remove staff” workaround. I am wondering if this is something that’s on the horizon for a future version of Dorico.
Thanks!