Hiding staff names for one flow

I’m afraid I’ve forgotten if this is possible and, if so, how it’s done. I’m working on an opera and one flow is a sextet in which I want the abbreviated staff names to show on all systems. The next flow, however, is a solo aria and staff labels would be redundant. Except for the exceptions which are possible by editing the staff labels using system or frame breaks, it seems that showing or hiding staff names is a global layout option which can’t be altered between flows. Is this correct? I’m hoping I don’t have to put manual system breaks at the beginning of every system!

You’re correct, sorry.

Perhaps create a separate layout for the flow that’s different in its labeling?

Create separate Players for that Flow with no abbreviated names. (Any instrumental part Layouts should include the sextet and Aria players, but not in the same flows!)

Another label-changing trick for Section Players is to create a divisi with no division, just a change of Full Label. That way, you can use the same Aria Player* for other characters in other Flows!

  • Not that Aria Player. :laughing:

Ha! You gave me an idea. For this baritone’s aria I created an instrument change (another baritone voice) with no label and, in Galley View, moved everything to that staff, just like a B-flat clarinet changing between flows to A clarinet. Of course, Dorico numbered the new baritone staff 1 and, for some reason, the piano reduction 2, so I had to put the baritone in his own 1-person group. A bit of a strange workaround but it does the trick. Using separate layouts won’t work in this case and I’m not yet up to snuff on the use of divisi staves. I can also avoid the clutter of having double players for all the voices.

My method has an unwanted side-effect, and I’m not sure that the other methods mentioned by Ben wouldn’t have the same effect. I may have created a staff without any label but, for some reason, Dorico still allots horizontal space to it at the beginning of each system. If I place a system break at the beginning of the system and choose to show no staff labels, the system jumps back to the page margin. I’m afraid I don’t understand this behaviour at all, and it means that if I want that bit of extra space, I have to add system breaks at the beginning of every system after all.


Do either of the players on the indented system have anything at all in their name? A single empty space, perhaps?

I thought of that, but no.

I think an indent at the start of a piece, even without labels, is to be expected. A first system that’s flush with the margin looks odd.

I don’t have extensive experience here, but I’ve seen several publishers (all American ones) who ask for no indent in parts.

Yeah, but that’s irrelevant to the third system, which I’m guessing is what we’re discussing…

Indeed. I had to set the indent of the first system in all flows to zero because if I force full names at the beginning of a flow (like with the vocal score of a vocal sextet), Dorico adds the indent to that as well, meaning that the first system has far too much indent, and I can’t move it to the left manually. If I subsequently don’t want labels on the first system of another flow (like with the vocal score of a solo aria), I need to add this manually. I’d actually already done this in the above example. If you look carefully, the 1st system indent is larger than the others. The question is, why does Dorico still indent systems which have no staff labels, and why does it remove this indent when adding a system break and setting the staff labels to none? This seems illogical.

I’m guessing because Dorico thinks that they do have labels: they just happen to have no text, and the minimum indent is still used. Whereas a system explicitly with no labels has no inset.

In fact, I’ve just tried deleting the Abbrev. text from a Player’s label, and I get the FULL name in its place! :confused: So I have to use a space, which is a label.

In the fullness of time I would hope that we could come up with a better overall solution to this issue. I can think of a couple right away: one would be to have a kind of “staff label change” item (like a note spacing change or the forthcoming condensing change) that would allow you to change the staff label settings from a particular point in the layout; the other would be to add a further property that says that the overridden staff labels should apply until the next break. The former seems like the better option to me. I’ll discuss with the team in due course and we’ll see what we can come up with, but you shouldn’t expect imminent changes in this area.

These are nice ideas, Daniel.

Indeed, and I’m sure that when they do implement this, it’ll be well thought-out. At the moment, in this particular instance, I created system breaks with the staff label set to None and copied them to the beginning of each system. It didn’t take all that long.

I see this discussion dates from 2 years ago. Is there now an easier way to have staff names on one flow and no staff names on another?

Well, you could use the breaks properties I suppose. Input a break at the very start of the flow, select the signpost and check the bottom panel. You can choose which labels you want to show. Not sure why this wasn’t suggested earlier in the thread. Maybe this feature didn’t exist then.

Thanks, Marc. I’m not seeing that though. I’ve got a Frame Break at the beginning of the new flow. But when I select it, I don’t see anything in the Properties panel that will help. There’s just the option to change to a System Break, or the Common column.
Am I missing something?

You should see that you can enable that property down there.


Oh, that’s in Engrave mode.

Oh, yes, Engrave mode. I should have thought of that. Sorry.
Many thanks for your help.

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