How do you globally hide rests?
You can hide bar rests using the options on the Player page of Layout Options.
You can’t hide all other rests in the main voice you are writing in (otherwise the music won’t add up), but you can hide rests in secondary voices, which is explained in the FAQ thread.
I want to hide primary rests. I have used colour to change whole note rests and came across a little problem…
The rectangle takes the colour specified but the fragment of staff line doesn’t. This makes the use of colour as a means to hide minim and semibreve rests unworkable. If you try to colour these two rest types on the staff the white extends over the staff line and if you have them above or below the staff the staff fragment remains black.
Here’s the problem…
Primary rests need to have the option of being hidden - not deleted.
The innocuous staff fragment doesn’t take the designated colour.
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Further to ‘white’ hidden minims and semibreve rests…
Sometimes the symbol doesn’t change colour even though it is indicated in the properties…
You have another problem. The bass group is considerably too far to the right. Can Dorico correct this?
John is right. Fortunately this issue can be remedied by choosing ‘Use optical spacing for beams between staves’ under Note Spacing in Layout Options.
Not having Dorico yet, but based on mu experiences with another program: having a simple way to click on a rest with a modifier and make it greyed out (almost invisible on screen) and completely invisible on print would be a big time saver.
Daniel has made it clear in another thread why Dorico behaves the way it does with regard to hiding rests:
I don’t really agree with the general principle of hiding arbitrary things, to be honest. Why are they there at all if they should be hidden? On the whole I prefer to try to find the underlying semantic reason why something should not appear, if possible, and to develop a solution that works musically rather than purely graphically. Of course that will not always be possible, but I think in the case of rests it is eminently possible, hence the approach we have taken.
I think this approach ensures consistency, and is a much more logical way of dealing with unwanted rests. But of course, as often as this has to be done in many scores, the process should perhaps be even more accessible than editing the properties panel.
It seems like you’ve basically already solved it, but anyway here’s the process for hiding anything:
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Select the item
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In the properties panel, enable ‘Color’ and click on the colored square beside it
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Set opacity to 0%
The item will still be visible in write and engrave modes, but if you go to print mode it will not be visible. If you want to do this to a bunch of items at the same time you’ll have to select them all and then make the change once. If you have half or whole rests with a ledger line still visible (or any other artifact), change them to quarter rests because those won’t leave any trace behind.
I might have misunderstood this, but in Elaine Gould’s »Behind Bars« I am at least able to find plenty of examples with hidden or omitted rests . On page 317, she claims: "As long as it is clear where the beats fall, it is acceptable to use rests only as part of the single line, placing them on the stave of the surrounding notes … ".
Here’s an example from Gould’s book, page 318.:
And here’s the same example, written in Dorico:
I am aware of the colour/opacity solution, but would certainly welcome a more straightforward approach to this problem.
Best,
Boye
The specific case of cross-staff notation where the other staff has no music of its own and thus should not show a bar rest is something that Dorico should do automatically anyway, and it will in due course.
I don’t really agree with the general principle of hiding arbitrary things, to be honest. Why are they there at all if they should be hidden? On the whole I prefer to try to find the underlying semantic reason why something should not appear, if possible, and to develop a solution that works musically rather than purely graphically. Of course that will not always be possible, but I think in the case of rests it is eminently possible, hence the approach we have taken.
Agree - unwanted rests should simply not appear. But when recording or step inputting piano music, there are a vast amount of possible note combinations - and I doubt that any app will be able to foresee all thee potential scenarios and automatically solve them.
And when entering music in step typing, activating and deactivating voices manually by doing something in a different window in one way or another, a simple click with a modifier on the rest that needs to be hidden would IMO be a simler solution.
Here’s an image (from Digital Performer) I came across which shows one situation, where individual rests seems to need to be dealt with individually. I wonder how Dorico would display those bars without manual editing.
Here’s another instance where I’d want to hide rests:
The typical way of notating jazz chord charts is one chord slash per beat, with chord symbols above. Earlier this year, as I prepared charts in Sibelius 7.5 for a recording session, the bassist said he didn’t want chord symbols - he wanted room to pencil in ideas on the spot, if needed.
I replaced the slashes with measure rests (or whole rests), but he then asked me to hide them - he wanted completely empty measures with nothing but the five-line staff.
I’d never been asked to do that before, but it made perfect sense. I realized that many times I’ve penciled in figures or chord voicings or voice-leading reminders at a rehearsal and have wished the staves were empty (instead of filled with slashes). (FWIW, this was a world-renowned musician and producer, who has also edited at least one very long, complex jazz score for publication.)
Does the Transparency" trick apply to any selected element, or just certain ones?
And am I correct that Dorico doesn’t (and won’t) have a Show/Hide command like Sibelius? I really like that feature in Sibelius and hope that if Dorico lacks it there are quick-and-easy alternatives.
The suggestion of changing minim or semibreve rests to the equivalent crotchet rests will work except that it requires a substantial increase in keystrokes. Wouldn’t it be better to have a simple keystroke to do the job and do it on any element?
Re scripting: probably there will be a way to use this for the purpose of such a solution?
Dorico already has a means of hiding bar rests if you need to: see the Players page of Layout Options.
I found the change color to be a good solution, however, one has little control over placement of rests i.e. moving them above the staff. What I wonder about is since they are still in the staff when you white them out and leave little blank spots in the staff will it print out like that?
yes, it will. for now, you have to move the rests outside of the staff and change color to white or make transparent with O in alpha channel. when printing, click on annotations and choose view options. I believe that it is in this thread somewhere. evidently, you can just move the rest up or down (and out of the way of the staff) but not horizontally.