Ok, success! That worked. Thank you Dan and everyone else. So that’s one difference between a choir reduction as a solo player, and as a section player - a choir reduction section player will NOT allow individual staves to be hidden. I wonder if there are other differences.
Still my humble opinion… Dorico makes a complicated pig’s ear of hiding/showing staves… sometimes you should just copy the competition…!
I was pulling my hair out trying to get an empty T/B staff hidden until I stumbled on this thread. After recreating the Choir as a “solo” instrument the staff hiding worked as dankreider described. But what a hassle (and how unintuitive). But if I wanted to do a divisi of one choral staff, I can only do that with a section instrument (as I understand it). Frustrating.
Curiously, when creating the extra Choir instrument, it was not named Choir2 [and the first one renamed Choir1] – both were simply named “Choir”.
I wish there was a comprehensive list of the scoring characteristics of solo and sectional players - “SOLO instruments can do ABC but cannot do XYZ.” Same for SECTIONAL instruments. It would make it easier to choose which type of player to use for things like Choir, keyboard, brass quartet (played by single players), or small ensembles (which might have multiple players on single parts, but no divisi). Ultimately I’m sure this will become apparent when the ability to combine players/staves is possible, but it’s a bit of a mystery right now.
The naming is because one was a solo player and one was a section player.
AFAIK, the only things I know are different between solos and sections (besides the sample patches) are:
- solo players can switch instruments
- sections can divide
- soloists can hide staves for grand staff instruments
Maybe someone else can chime if they know of other distinctions between the two.
And you can add and remove staves from solo players (using Edit > Staff > Add Staff…), but not from section players.
That makes sense, since divisi would be the intended functionality for section players. And that seems logically related to the issue of hiding empty staves in the OP.
I’ll add that to the Beginner’s Guide. It would be helpful brief description of the difference between the two.
Here is a very special problem:
I’m writing a piano voice with 2 staves.
I’d like to have the chord symbols between the staves, so I choose Engrave Options → ‘position of the chord symbols between the staves’.
BUT in my first 4 bars I don’t have anything in my right hand (see screenshot) and i’d like to remove my treble clef staff. This is only possible if i use the option ‘position of the chord symbols above the staff’…but this is not handy for everything which I wrote from bar 5 on, cause there it is much more useful to have my chord symbols between the staves.
Is there any possibility to have the chord symbols between the staves but to hide my treble clef staff of the first 4 bars?
Only by using a second (single-stave) instrument in the first four bars.
I expected this - thanx a lot. That’s a pitty.
Looking at your example as a pianist, I’d much rather you split the chords between two staves. They have to be played with two hands anyway: I think I can safely say that nobody in the world can reach a minor ninth between their fourth and fifth fingers, which is what your E7sus(b9) appears to demand.
Is that called “Rachmaninoff voicing?” 
Given I can’t even stretch it on my Akai LPK25 travel note-entry keyboard, no, it’s just called “unplayable” 
…guys…that’s writing for jazz: you give the piano player a little hint about which notes you wanna have, but his basic orientation is the chord symbol. Which means: he FIRST looks at the chord symbol and if he is not sure about the notes he should/could use, he is looking at the written chord notes. They are just a guide-line. You don’t expect the piano-player to exactly play that voicing. That’s why you write it like this.
But if he or she chooses to play what you have written (and sometimes players do, especially less advanced ones, etc.), then I agree that it would be a lot more clear if you split that material that’s currently on the one staff onto two so that it’s actually playable with two hands (just my two cents as a jazz pianist)…
- D.D.
I don’t think anyone is complaining about the content, just the formatting.
What you wrote is very easy to play (with two hands of course) but IMO there’s no point making it hard to read by going against convention for no apparent reason.
I know the people for whom I’m writing and I know how they read scores. But thanx anyway guys.
I even don’t want to play them the voicings which are written - that’s why I’m writing it like I did. In jazz scores a lot of things which are written down are just more ‘subtle’.
Rob, a jazz piano player won’t read the voicings which I wrote. He will FIRST read the chord symbols. At least all players I know.
Though not a trained jazzer, I’ve done plenty of theatre pit work and function stuff over the years. I’ve never seen this kind of voicing dumped on one staff in professionally printed music, ever. I’m just not seeing the justification for doing it this way: if you’re bothering to voice the chord at all, rather than writing it out in the most closed voicing possible, why not just split it between the staves appropriately?
Jazzisfaction, sorry to pile on (and i know you weren’t asking), but as a pianist, I’ll add my vote to the others and recommend not using that voicing…
If your pianist is going to read the chord symbols instead of the voicings anyways, why not use slash voices?
Is there a way to write a piano part that switches between grandstaff format and then a centered single-staff chord/bass format ?
ie, you want something played explicitly as written, then comp/solo for a while, then back to explicit ?
Likewise for SATB+piano. Suppose the soprano solos for a while and you want to temporarily remove the ATB lines to save pages ?
I guess you could remove a staff midway through, then add a staff later on. I’m not sure how Dorico would treat the chord symbols though - you’d need to check that.