I don’t know how to fix the following.
Working on a piece which involves 2 percussion players, both have several instruments.
I’ve chosen for the option not to hide empty staves. So there’s always one instrument showing per percussion-player.
At one point one of the players plays both timpani and toms (the toms are parts of a drumkit). Dorico shows both staves at that spot. So far, so great.
Both timpani and toms stop at the same time to be silent for the rest of the flow.
However, until the end of the flow Dorico keeps showing both empty staves, in this case also resulting in less systems per page. I don’t know how to tell Dorico only to show one (empty) instrument as it should do (and does before the timpani-toms passage).
Can you attach the project, or at least a cut-down version of it, so we can take a look? I seem to be writing this a lot tonight! But it really is easier to diagnose these problems if you attach the project file rather than just a description or even a picture. There’s a sticky thread with guidelines about how to help us to help you, which I encourage you to take a look at.
Hi Daniel,
Here’s a fully stripped-down and simplified file. The player has drums and timpani. When he’s doing nothing the score shows only one of the empty staves. After he played both simultaneously, Dorico shows both empty staves until the end of the flow, not ‘knowing’ which one to hide. In this particular case, when it comes to the full score, the extra empty stave has an unwanted effect on the lay-out (amount of systems per page), going on for pages. Besides that, the lay-out is inconsistent. On other pages the player has only one empty stave, on these pages there are two.
Grenspaal 369 forum - SCENE 17 - NAMIDDAG.dorico.zip (622 KB)
I’m not sure I understand the problem after looking at the project, Douwe. As you’ve uploaded it, you have disabled hide empty staves and activated the checkbox for ‘Percussion II’ in the list of players that should be excluded from hide empty staves, so Dorico isn’t allowed to hide either staff. Once they’re playing together in bars 61-65, they’re both active, so you can’t go back to a single staff without using hide empty staves. Alternatively, once you add some more music to one or other of the instruments in the next system, then Dorico will hide the other one, because you’ll then have a new transition and Dorico knows which instrument is active. E.g. add a note in bar 69 following to either of the instruments, and the other staff will disappear.
Thanks Daniel, yes I admit this setting is ‘to much’. Sorry if I didn’t make it more clear. My score, which is of course much bigger and involves more players, does show empty staves. In case of the percussion players (who have a combi of instruments) it shows only one instrument, so it also shows one empty staff per player. As soon as the player plays two instruments simultaneously, Dorico continues to show two empty staves until the end of the flow. I know I can hide one of them with adding more music on the next page, but I don’t want to…(otherwise I wouldn’t have this issue)
And if I use ‘hide empty staves’ they both disappear until the end of the flow, I suppose.
It results in an inconsistency in my score : everywhere else the players have only one empty staff (or a grand staff when marimba or so).
As I say, you should find that on a later system, once you start writing for one or other of the instruments again, the other one will be hidden. But until you write more music for one or other of them, Dorico considers them both active if they were last playing at the same time.
There is something else going on which I don’t understand. I tried to experiment with the ‘remove staff’ option to solve this. Perhaps this is a bad idea anyway, but I don’t get Dorico’s behaviour when I do. Picture 1 (the 13.02.13) shows the spot. Drums and timpani are played by one player. On the next page both empty staves are shown (also resulting in only one system per page). I select the bar rest in the timpani at bar 133 and right-click ‘remove staff’, I get the other picture (with the unlucky number 13.13.13) showing even more empty staves. That’s not the way it’s suppose to work, I think. What is going wrong? Or, what am I doing wrong?
You can’t remove the last staff belonging to an instrument, so that feature won’t do what you want it to do, I’m afraid.
The good news is that the next version of Dorico will have greater control over which staves are hidden or shown at any point: you’ll be able to edit this at any system break, giving you much greater control and flexibility.
Daniel, I know, but the player keeps silent until in the end of the flow. I don’t add notes just for the sake of hiding a staff. Well, ok, that is good news!!!
Is there any news about cues for unpitched percussion? Or ‘my topic’ a better working equivalent for system selections…? ;>) Just asking.
Working only in Dorico for three months now, getting more and more into it…
Pitched cues on unpitched percussion are tricky, and we don’t yet have a good solution for that. Making selections with the system track is our suggested method for ensuring you select everything in the system, including system-attached items.
You might know (and perhaps get tired of it, I’m sorry) that I refer to the problems with time-signatures and wrong amount of beats when copying / inserting larger chunks of music. Almost two years ago (after the introduction of the system track) you said this about this topic : “Dorico still has no concept of a system selection in the way that Sibelius does, and I know this is crucially important to you. It is not our intention to introduce this concept into Dorico: our preferred approach is instead to handle things when you paste in a more sophisticated way instead.”
Dorico is very good (well, the only one) in inserting in individual voices (can be a tricky one though if you forget go out Insert Mode…), still waiting for the ‘sophisticated way’ which handles the bigger inserts
This glimpse of the future is quite intriguing!
Indeed! Great news!
Very much looking forward to that! Logical to connect it to system breaks, just like changing staff labels or space size.