Instrument doubling staff order

Is it possible to, when switching instruments, for the staff order to change to reflect this? For example, if flute 3 doubles on piccolo, I would want the flute sections to be below flutes 1 & 2, but the piccolo sections to be above flutes 1 & 2.

IIRC Not possible (at least not at this time).

No, it’s not possible. Staves for instrument changes are always adjacent at present.

Hi!
Has there been any improvement on this problem? It looks really unprofessional to have piccolo under flutes or Eb clarinet under the Bb and A clarinets.
In my case, I have 2 Flutes and the 2nd doubles for piccolo. Also 2 Clarinets, where the 2nd doubles for Eb clarinet. Piccolo should always be on the top of the score, shouldn’t it? And isn’t it a standard for the lowest voice to substitute?

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There’s not been any change in this area.

As to what’s “standard”, Behind Bars specifically gives the example of an Eb (2nd) clarinet remaining under the (1st) Bb. Indeed the text at the top might seem to suggest that if it’s Flute 2 or 3 who’s switching to Piccolo, the Piccolo could remain underneath Flute 1 in the score:


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One can generally finesse the problem (if it is a problem) by combining two Players into one part layout with judicious use of system breaks and hiding empty staves in the part and the score.

Yes, that is what I taught (and had been taught): that a Piccolo staff which is dedicated only to that instrument would appear above the Flutes in the score, but if it is Flute 2 (or 3) doubling for the moment on Piccolo, it remains in its place below Flute 1. Similar things would be true of Clarinet 2, who sometimes doubles on Eb Clarinet; the staff stays below Clarinet 1.

That said, the ability to shift vertical order of staves (particularly in Woodwind) is a useful one in certain situations. I am thinking specifically of musial theater, in which Reed 1 might at different times play flute, clarinet, and alto saxophone. The orchestrator most often writes these in standard score order (flute above clarinets above saxes, etc.) and only later assigns player numbers to them, and it can be seen as desirable to maintain that order if the score is ever printed. This was done with the Boosey full score of West Side Story, and will be done for a forthcoming score that I’m responsible for. Of existing software notation, as far as I know only Finale is genuinely capable of this.

I strongly doubt Finale will automatically shift a 3rd Flute player from below the other Flutes to above them automatically when Flute 3 picks up a Piccolo.

I didn’t say it happened automatically. But one can change the vertical order of instruments from page to page if one chooses… It’s a bit fiddly (and I did it so long ago, it may be handled differently in the current version), but it can be done.

Yes, in Finale the staves have vertical positions which can be freely changed, both initially and per system. I once used this capability (about 30 years ago) to precisely overlap two staves with the same clef, as a primitive form of condensing.

The “solution” in Finale does not sound like any less work than what one can accomplish in Dorico.

I certainly might be wrong, but IIRC they killed off that capability about 10 years ago when they changed the Optimize Staff Systems function. You could “optimize” but keep all staves, and then the staff positioning of every staff on that system was completely independent. My Finale chops are a bit down from what they used to be, but I can’t think of an easy way to do this now.

That’s correct.

I sometimes have to make a Piccolo/3rd Flute part in Finale where the Picc is placed above the Flutes on the score. I add a stave below the Flutes to serve as the Picc/3rd Flute part and “copy down” the Picc and 3rd Flute to this extra stave. Hide the extra stave on the score and hide the Picc staff when not playing and that’s it. The only hitch is that you have to make corrections in 2 places. Maybe a similar approach could be taken using Dorico.

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Have you read the entire thread?

Yes. What did I miss?

In that case, I apologize for spreading false information. I created my score perhaps 20 years ago (using, if I recall right, a specialized plug-in), and though I’ve continued to save it in newer versions over the years (and the page-by-page reordering has remained functional), I haven’t made any layout changes (in this particular respect) since about 2008 when I created score and parts for a tryout production. Nor will I need to revisit that now that it’s in the hands of the printers. So I suppose that’s a closed book, and currently no software can do this (as opposed to faking its appearance). I thank you for the information.

@notesetter

This seems to me to be almost the same strategy one would use in Finale.

Got it. My suggestion has less finesse but for me, works well and with the least amount of work.

Actually, not 100% false, as it turns out. (My memory had been nagging at me, so I investigated my archives when I had time.) The ability to change staff order remains, if one purchases a bundle of plug-ins called TG Tools (not the subset that comes/came free with Finale). I tried it out just now, and its Staff List Manager still works.

So, just to keep the record straight: it’s not altogether easy, and involves an extra expense, but Finale users can still change the order of (e.g.) Reed staves from one system to the next.

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Yep, just tried it too. Nice! There’s not a drag and drop or “reorder” way to move them around in Staff List Manager, is there? I just unclicked “Relative,” then typed in absolute values for positions and it worked fine.