Hide instrument doublings not used in flow

Dorico
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I’ve set up a pretty large score which also contains a couple of doublings (e.g. flute/piccolo, oboe/eng.hrn etc)
I can’t find out how to hide those doublings not used in one flow, is that possible?

This actual score is for a 24 piece orchestra but the score, including all the doublings, consists of 40 instruments.
Working with all these instruments visible all the time isn’t very practical.

When changing to instruments of the same transposition (e.g. flute/picc, trp/flh etc.) I’d rather see a possibility to change midi channel/slot on the same player. Something more like in Sibelius. But if I understand Daniel right something like this is coming in the future, or?

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I assume you mean in galley view? You won’t see those instruments at all in page view if they have no music in a given flow. You can’t hide an unused instrument in galley view, I’m afraid.

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Yes, of course, I always work in gallery view. (Working in Page View is like navigating your car with a map, not a fancy GPS. You’ll find yourself always driving at the edges of the map, never in the middle. :wink: )

I’ve found workarounds for most of my issues in Dorico and I love working with it, but this is a thing I really hope you’ll consider a better solution for.

Here is an example:
When writing for a big band, which isn’t a very large ensemble, there are often plenty of doublings. Let’s say, for simplicity, all sax players use three instruments (sax, flute & clarinet in various combinations) and all trumpets doubles on flugelhorns. Then you’ll end up with a score containing of 32 staves. That’ll require me to upgrade my 30" screen to something like 45" instead.
I don’t know how to solve this, but as it is now it’s very impractical. I’d love to see a function like the Sibelius Focus on Staves.

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You can fake “focus on staves” by creating layouts with the staves you want to focus on. How well that would work for you depends how flexible you want “focus on staves” to be - the “layouts” idea works best if you work with a few “stable” groups of staves (e.g. strings, wind, brass), not with “random” selections of staves that are constantly changing.

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Thank you Rob, I know about that even though I haven’t tried it. The major problem though, is how to handle instrument doublings and I don’t think your workaround works for that.

I don’t want to say I’m disappointed since everything in Dorico is so well worked out, and for those things not yet implemented, the team has really nice plans for the implementation. But when it comes to handling staves in large scores or instrument doublings I haven’t seen any plan for that.

I have done a couple of works in Dorico and I really love working with it, but now when I’m about to do a couple of works for orchestra with a lot of instrument doublings I really need to be able to hide not used instruments. I really can’t work with a big band score containing about 40 staves. My only alternative now is to go back to Sibelius for these kinds of works.

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I, too, would like a solution to hide doublings in flows where they aren’t needed. It’s distracting to work with a section where every other staff is empty.

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I can’t tell whether what I want is the same or different: When Oboes double the Violins, I want to have one staff line in the Full Score for both Violin 1 and Oboe 1, but separate Parts for each instrument.

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Ben,
What you’re wanting is the very much awaited “reduce” function — although melting oboes and violins in a single staff is not common. We’ll have to wait for it to be implemented. What they’re talking about here is a way to “tidy” galley view when it’s overcrowded with unused instruments in a flow… Both things would be very welcome, I think. And it must be a nightmare to implement !

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I think Ben is thinking of reproducing some Baroque pieces that double Oboe and Violin for some arias.
Would creating one staff in the Full Score labeled with both instruments work but then making two layouts with the staff of each unlabeled and the Layouts given the names of the different instruments?

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As things stand we don’t intend to make it possible for completely dissimilar instruments to be shown on the same staff. In the case of a baroque aria it sounds more like a labelling issue than a condensing issue anyway, if the oboes simply double the violins throughout.

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I do have quite a lot of music where one ‘section’ (let’s call it a Flow) has oboes and violins doubling, and then other Flows where they are independent. Perhaps a less extreme example is separate violins and violas, except for one Flow where all strings play in unison. In the Full Score, I’d want just one line, but each part would have its own line.

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I’ve been thinking on this area for a few days … Reduce / Galley View / Dissimilar Instruments and coming at it from a Playback, rather than Notation angle. This isn’t a request, I may well be asking for the impossible …

One of the things I’m hoping I can get to with Dorico at some point is to build a comprehensive template of all instruments and load it as a default. The template would cover multiple libraries, instrument variations, solo/ensemble/grouped instruments (a la Symphobia and God only knows how that’s done), work in conjunction with other software (e.g. VE Pro) and have the majority of the work involved in setting volumes, panning, effects and entering articulations already done. In other words, the kind of template that many composers have as their default in Cubase and other DAW’s.

From that template I would then be able to able to select a particular instrument from a particular library and add it to the score. And it’s only when I select - activate might be a better word - that the samples are loaded and the instrument first appears in Galley View.

There would be times when I’d want to add an instrument but not have it appear as formal notation. For example, to improve the sound, I might want double an instrument - maybe have two different libraries playing the same 1st Violins part. Two distinct staves is needed in Galley View - I might adjust expression etc. for one of them - but back in Page View it’s still only one stave. It’s a different take on reduce.

If I’m working with Libraries like East-West, working with multiple variations of the same instrument, those would also need to be reduced down to a single instrument for notation purposes. And with so many variations possible, it could well be that some form of hiding/showing loaded instruments, or displaying groups of instruments, would be needed in Galley View.

Why am I hoping for something like this? Primarily to have all the donkey work done and yet have it appear as a blank page. All I’ll need to do is activate an instrument - and everything I might want to consider is already there - to start writing. I’m also hoping that I can beef up the sound, without compromising notation or cluttering up the display.


…Thanks to anyone who read this far. You can blame the dog for such thoughts btw - I walk her every morning and think of what I’m going to be working on during the day. Sometimes I find I’m thinking about process rather than what I’ll be writing - hence posts like this.

One final point that’s a bit more relevant to the previous discussion. Daniel, when you say “Completely Dissimilar Instruments” I’m hoping that SATB on two staves won’t be an issue?

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The original post wanted a way to hide doubling instruments in galley view if they’re not used in a flow. This would be helpful for theatre work too, especially where something like bass clarinet is used in two flows out of ninety.

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If an instrument isn’t in the Flow, then it won’t be shown in Galley View (for the duration of that Flow).

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Wrong. If a PLAYER isn’t in the flow, it won’t be shown in Galley View for the duration of that flow. If a flute player is used in a flow, and that player also holds a piccolo, the piccolo stave shows regardless of whether it’s used.

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Ah. Yes. :blush: Need more coffee.

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Dorico’s way of dealing with doubling is fantastic, but it would be useful to click on a double and ‘don’t show for this flow’. Or better, be able to select multiple flows in setup and do this in one go.

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Hi,

I think I’m having a similar problem… I’m writing a big band score, in galley view. My Tenor Sax 2 is also playing the flute. So far so good.
Now my Flute staff shows up in the middle of the sax section, between Tenor Sax 2 and Barytone. That’s not practical when I need to write sax tuttis… I’d like an option to change the location of the Flute staff (WITHOUT also moving Tenor 2 around, which doesn’t seem to be possible), or at least to hide it when it is not needed.
By the way, I am also looking for a way to quickly select every staff of a section for inputting music on all staves at the time (I love this), without having to press Enter and then Shift+Down five times.
Cheers

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And I’m aware of the new Manual Staff Visibility feature, but it works per-player, not per-instrument. Bummer

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Hi Clement!
This happens in galley view, but not in page view, right? I don’t think you can solve this, unless by adding a new sax player ticked only to play in the flows where the flute is not needed… Honestly I don’t think it’s worth the hassle.
If you don’t find you’re in this situation, something is wrong in your setup : the same player is supposed to hold both instruments.
Feel free to upload a reduced version of your file if you want extensive help on this :wink:

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