I was a Finale user (RIP) who recently switched to Dorico and I have to say overall it has been a widely positive change. There are so many things that Dorico handles much more effectively than the older software.
That being said, one thing Finale provided that is absent in Dorico is the ability to hide elements. In Finale it was so simple: want to hide a note/rest? select it and hit command+h. Want to remove a time signature, rhythmic layer, stem, etc.? Command+h. Practically any element that had a handle could be hidden and unhidden with a single keystroke. (Sibelius also does this quite well) The doors this opens for composers and engravers focusing in contemporary music are innumerable. Often times there are common practice modern notation techniques that require workarounds to achieve in most softwares that arenât necessarily optimized for new music and this simple feature is invaluable in its utility in that field. The current workaround in Dorico is different depending on the element one wishes to hide and none of them are fool-proof . For example, if I want to use a rest as a placeholder and hide it, the closest I can get to hiding it completely is changing the scale to 1%. This makes it effectively invisible but if beaming rests with stemlets is activated, a thin beam that is not visible in the software magically appears in the pdf version. One must then excruciatingly adjust each individual stemlet manually. This is incredibly frustrating and seems ultimately unnecessary in a software as advanced as Dorico.
This forum is an incredible resource and I am greatly thankful for the kind folks on the Steinberg side of things that have been so attentive (and often impressively patient) to answer so many questions and provide detailed fixes and workarounds. I come to you on my hands and knees begging for you to raise this issue with the developers that people have been calling for since 2016. I know this program is geared towards standard notation and has to serve everyone equally, but adding the ability to hide elements would hurt nobody and help many people in my field.
Welcome to the Dorico forum, Tyler.
To hide a Time Signature, set the property.
To âhideâ a rest, select it, and Context Menu->Remove RestâŠ
To hide a note head, set the property.
To hide a stem, set the property.
To hide a Time Signature, set the properties.
To hide Text, set the property.
To hide a clef, change to âinvisible clefâ.
To hide parts of a system, use text with empty spaces and set property âErase backgroundâ.
To hide an accidental, set the property.
To hide a dynamic, set the property.
There is more than thisâŠ
In my opinion this is actually easier since it removes the added cognitive burden of memorizing various key commands for every possible variation. But of course, you can set those too (in the key commands menu) for ones you use frequently.
As for the items which are not currently hideable, I do agree that the developers should blow this wide open for users to decide since there are endless reasons a user may wish to hide something which is currently not in this list.
In the meantime I am finding color > opacity 0% / alpha 0 does help (and is better than nothing).
I try to explain: Doricoâs very basic concept is, that its notation is semantically structured, every item has - besides being graphically visible - a very specific meaning. For a purely graphical item it is absolutely no problem to just hide it(s visibility). If an item has and requires a meaning, it goes against the semantic concept to just hide its appearance. It would mean, that it doesnât mean anything.
This sentence proves, that itâs somehow contradictory to have something mean and not
mean anything.
erm, just no - there are countless situations where it is necessary or desirable to hide things, temporarily or permanently. Sometimes multiple things at the same time.
and this
again, just no. The idea that music notation is consistently or absolutely or even predictably semantically structured is wishful thinking at best.
I can understand your reply, I am just trying to explain the fundamental basics of the software Dorico. Itâs (on purpose) a completely different approach than any other notation software. If we can understand this concept, it will also slowly change our approach to musical notation. We will start to re-think a lot of our habits.
I know that notation is quite often just a hint of what should be produced, and that the performer is allowed, needed and encouraged to be creative. Still, itâs just notation, and Dorico is just a software with a specific approach, a tool.
If you have a typewriter, it is difficult and almost impossible to paint a watercolour
paintingâŠ
I just had a thought, if we compare with architecture, the German Bauhaus - or itâs earlier âpredecessorâ Charles Rennie Mackintosh from Glasgow: they were groundbreaking new concepts of architecture, form follows function. In a way this is comparable with a software, where the appearance follows the content.
You are correct. There are a handful of various menu items sadly missing from the jump bar that I encounter from time to time, and I would wish one day everything could be found from it. However Iâm sure from a development standpoint it requires an expansive database of connections for every possible thing so â request it â and be patient. The software is still young in the grand scheme of the notation world, so while it may lack a few things here and there, it will come â the software has really grown at a fast pace all things considered.
I wouldnât imagine too much of a demand for a specific key command for hiding time signatures, since key commands are typically reserved for the kind of thing you do very often and repetitively. You might need to do that, but probably most users donât need to hide time signatures with such a daily frequency that they need to assign it to a key command which they in turn have to memorize.
My primary point though, with the jump bar, was that itâs easier on yourself to assign a key command to âhide elementâ, use the jump bar for everything else, and failing that, check the bottom panel, and failing that, use opacity set to 0% if it is not available. If you had to assign and memorize a unique key command for every possible different hiding element, youâd end up with dozens of commands making it really difficult to keep track, so the jump bar is very helpful for stuff like that. For example I sometimes need to toggle hide notehead or hide stem â but the reality is even though I work in Dorico every day, I likely only really need to do that once in awhile. However if I was engraving a piece which required a lot of hiding noteheads, then I would either assign a command OR a macro.
If you feel you need to hide time signatures all day every day, yes I find that an unusual need but to each their own â I recommend recording a macro. Itâs easy - go to Script > Start Recording Macro. With a time signature selected, toggle that switch to hide in the bottom panel. Now End Recording Macro. and name it. Close and restart Dorico. Now, you can access it within this Script menu, but better yet, it will now be accessible within the jump bar!
Now if you really feel itâs essential to access this often with a key command â there are ways to set this externally. If youâre on a mac you can simply set a shortcut under system settings > Keyboard > Shortucts > App Shortcuts -
If youâre on a PC Iâm sure there is an equivalent way which other users could point you to.
While I understand there is a bit of frustration in creating such workarounds, the good thing with these is once you have set them up on your computer, you donât have to do it again, and now you can always find it whichever way you please.
While I understand this perspective, as someone who uses Dorico daily to create high quality mockups, there are numerous cheats that I have to do for best quality playback which you would never show a live player. This includes many timing cheats (hidden tuplets, hidden tempo changes, hidden caesuras and hidden fermatas which would be musically implied by a sensitive interpretation), many dynamic cheats and articulation cheats which force a library to produce their best sounding result that a player would do automatically (and thus, those added elements would simply clutter the score with unnecessary information that a live player would not need to see or be confused by).
I understand that Dorico was not traditionally designed with a focus on mockups and playback, but with the addition of the DAW-like play tab and key editor and mixer etc., and in 2024 with MuseGroup doing stellar stuff with playback quality, the demand and expectation for this is only going to increase.
Playback is but one example. Such hidden cheats can be also helpful for certain engraving styles. Or for something which is optional / editorial internally. Thereâs also many uses within educational materials and textbooks which can use hiding âmeaningfulâ elements (I remember a time when you used to not be able to hide cautionary sigs which was annoying for educational uses among many others!). Point is, I do agree with the notion that users are adults and can decide for themselves and their musical context which differs wildly from each person â and that the software is overly restrictive on this front. Like I said I donât personally understand why Damian wants to hide time signatures, but at the same time itâs his music and I donât care â let him have it and go to town I say! I probably frequently hide things that other users would deem unthinkable lol.
If you must know, primarily for changing beaming-groupings. I need this a lot, because Dorico insists on âhelpfullyâ auto-beaming everything, and there is no âauto-beam offâ command.
You can also accomplish this by using parentheses in the meter popover. For example, if you input (2+3/4) in the popover, youâll get a hidden 5/4 time sig that beams as 2+3 instead of 3+2.
