Hiding items on the staff in general

Dorico
1

Hi all,

I’m using the time limited demo version of Dorico and I find myself searching for answers instead of getting through making stuff.

I’m trying to make some quizzes and method exercises. I wanted to hide barlines and have the student draw in where the barlines should go. Also, I’m trying to follow the instructions of how to hide the clef. I found it on the Dorico Help search but it doesn’t seem to work. I can’t even select the clef with the select tool in Write mode. Even if I were to select it, it’s not that easy to just “hide” it. I have to turn the opacity to zero? That seems a little strange. I’m coming from a Sibelius background and those types of things were easy to do with a simple Select/Cmd+shift+H.

I even tried to make blank stave paper just to see if I could do it, but I haven’t figured that out since I couldn’t hide the barlines, the clef and the instrument name on the left.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many features that I love in Dorico. One is how easy it is to use VST’s because the interface in Play mode is very DAW like. Something other engraving software should take note of but…

Am I just early to the party?

2

If you do not enter a Time Signature, you can just keep entering notes without bar lines. If this is for a quiz, you could always tell students to bar the passage as 4/4 in the instruction.

At least for single lines you can get by with a blank clef (one of the extra clefs provided in the RH panel) and a tick mark for a bar line at the end of the line. You stretch the one measure for the width of the page with a Layout > Note Spacing command to fill the width of the page.

staff.png

3

SDF, respectfully, this is a common objection, and it’s not the way to approach Dorico. If you’re coming from Sibelius (or even worse, from Finale, like me), it’s a bit of a shock. If you just start dinking around, as I was tempted to do, it’s just frustrating because you’re used to a different UI.

Start with the YouTube tutorials. The things are you trying to achieve are fairly easy, but how you get there is COMPLETELY different than S or F.

Also, you’ll find that users on the forum are happy to help. Give it time, and be willing to “un-learn,” and you’ll get it quickly.

Best regards,
Dan