Hiding rests and hiding rest-dots

Re Hiding Rhythm dots - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

In Finale, I can use a one-stroke key command to make a rest (including its dot, if applicable) completely transparent. Can we do this with Dorico yet or something like it?

In Write mode select the rest you want to hide, then go Edit > Remove rests.

If you go into Dorico preferences (which on Mac is on the Dorico menu on the far left; I’m not sure about Windows) you can add a keyboard command for this function, which, if you can find a spare single key (e.g. without modifiers like shift or control) then yes, you can use a single keystroke. On a full size Mac keyboard I’ve mapped this particular function to one of the redundant function keys above the number keypad.

May I ask how to make a rest visible again once I removed it via “Remove rest”?

Select the last visible note or rest before the removed rests and turn off its Ends Voice property in the lower zone; or select the first visible note or rest after the removed rests and turn off its Starts Voice property.

2 Likes

Hi @rowild ,

I don’t know whether its for making worksheets, or some other purpose, but if you’d like to preserve the spacing of notes in a bar—simply making the rest “invisible”—I’d recommend reading this post. I found it very useful: Hiding notes and rest - #2 by DanKreider

Reversing the steps makes the rest visible again.

Best wishes,

Harry

@pianoleo Thank you very much for your quick response! Very much appreciated!

@hrderrett Thank you to you, too, for your feedback and tips!

I still have to try the resizing solution. But I already tried the approach with setting the color of a rest to 0%, which does not work for dotted rests, because the dot remains visible (I know, dotted rests are a discussion for itself…)

I am still new to Dorico and can’t “train” as much as I would like to, but at the moment I very much miss Finale’s simple “hide item” solution, which not only hides items from printing via a simple keyboard shortcut (I know, I can assign one to “remove rest” in Dorico), but also shows those items as ghosted notes in the Finale score based on a customisable opacity value, which has always been a very valuable feature to me. But I am sure I’ll grow into Dorico and it is just a means of getting adjusted and losing old habits.

1 Like

The H-stroke for hiding something in Finale was very helpful. I wish Dorico had a similar simple function like that. I don’t like going to Edit → Remove Rests, because I think the parts may become disorganized.
For the scaling down to 1, I am afraid this doesn’t work in Dorico 4 for dotted rests/notes.

As you can see, the rest is scaled down to 1, but the dot didn’t change to 1. The “solution” I’ve found was to use force duration so I had a quarter and an eight-note rest instead of a dotted quarter. And then scaling it to one. Yet, even so, there were still 2 small points that I could still see:

So, in addition to all that, I had to change the rests position so the small points were on the line. But obviously, this isn’t practical, especially if you were used to hit “H” on Finale and that’s it.
I know Dorico doesn’t work as Finale (each software has its advantages and its disadvantages), but is there a easier way to do it?

PS: Is changing the color 100% to white 100% safe? I am afraid and orchestra may print the score and/or the parts in a slightly brown color, and the white-colored rests would appear.

So make your own Hide Rests shortcut.

As I said, “remove rests” is not hiding rests, the parts can become disorganized.

Please explain.

16:25

Try it in your example, it should not disorganize anything, simply… remove the dotted quarter rest. The example in the video is showing a side effect when writing in a still unsupported way (Dorico doesn’t support aleatoric boxes, cut out staves, etc…)
Your example is perfectly handled.

I think you are right, it might work for these particular measures. However, in the same project I have graphic notation, which for now I’ve been handling. That said, for future versions of Dorico, it would be very useful to be able to simply hide rests instead of removing rests.

Rather than trying to hide dotted rests, try using notes of equivalent value (to maintain the spacing) and hide the stem and the notehead in Properties (those two attributes are only available in Properties when you are in Engrave mode). If you need to use Rest pos. to move a note vertically (so that it does not affect other notes at the same rhythmic position) you can also hide the ledger lines which might result from such a move.

Importantly, when you hide a dotted notehead, the dot becomes hidden too.

There is no need to use scaling or to change the opacity or the colour, and when a note has its notehead and stem hidden, they show up in Dorico as a very pale grey (at normal size) so it is easy to see them and edit them. They do not print.

If playback is important, in Properties > Common you can suppress playback of selected notes so that they effectively become rests.

@StevenJones01 that was a great idea, thank you!
Sure that’s not the ideal scenario; it would be great to hit “H” and hide the rest and the dot, but given all that was discussed and the current possibilities in Dorico 4, I think that’s the best solution. (Even though for this particular measure the “remove rest” could also work fine, but in other situations it may not).

1 Like