Is there a way to change instrument names in the score?

I have an English Horn, which is in F. The instrument name is simply that, ‘English Horn’, but the score insists on showing ‘English Horn in F’ on the first line, and ‘F English Horn’ on the following.
How does one change or disable this automatic name editing?

Could you attach the project here? It should be the case that English horn is set to never show its transposition, so I need to take a look at the data from the file. (You’re not a beta tester in disguise who had access to a pre-release version of the software, are you?)

Not a beta tester. I wish I had been! I’ve been using the online software Noteflight for a good 6 years, and I don’t think they’ve gotten more bug reports from anyone else…

Here’s the file.

You can’t attach the file directly: please zip it up into an archive. If it’s still larger than 2MB when zipped up, please send it to me by email at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de.

Here it is:
Prayer of St. Francis.dorico.zip (722 KB)

Dorico files are themselves zip files, but the forum won’t accept files with .dorico extensions, so you have to zip them up (or you could change the file extension to .zip, but don’t do that!).

I’ve been looking at this for the last 20 minutes or so and I really can’t figure out why you’re getting a transposition for English Horn, except that perhaps you’ve edited the instrument’s short name to be empty, and that might be confusing matters.

I didn’t intentionally edit the instrument’s short name to empty and, forgive my ignorance, where can I find this option? In Setup Mode, when I right-click on a player and click rename, there’s only one text field.

That is indeed the player’s name, but if you expand the arrow next to the player’s name you will see the instrument held by the player, and you can then click the little chevron > next to the instrument’s name to get at the Edit Names dialog.

Wonderful! Thanks very much.
Since you’re obviously extremely busy on the forums, where could I have found this info so I can look there next time before asking?

Unfortunately you probably can’t yet find this information in the Dorico web help, but our author is working furiously to expand upon it as fast as she can.

Unfortunately, one can also select the instrument name (in white type next to the icon of a person’s torso) on the Players Panel and change it; but this only changes the name in eg Layouts – not on the score itself – as I discovered the hard way! And changing the name of harpsichord to cembalo in the panel that opens when you click on “Edit Names” changes it in the score and Layouts Panel; but does not change it in the list of players.

Hope it is clear what I mean.

David

Once you’ve overridden a player’s name in the Players panel, then it won’t be updated by changes to the instruments that player is holding. But if you double-click the player’s name to edit it again, you will see a little “reset” button at the right-hand side, which will then reset the name back to whatever Dorico thinks it should be by default.

Looked through the post replies. However, even if I change the instrument name of a player in Setup, the layout will not follow the name change.

For example, “Horn in F” will be displayed in the score/layout, no matter what I name it in the Setup.

Am I missing something?

You may also have an overridden layout name, of course: edit that and click the little “reset” button in there to make sure that Dorico will update the layout name when the instruments held by the player(s) in the layout change.

Thanks, Daniel. Followed your suggestion and discovered the “Show transposition in staff labels” setting. :slight_smile:

This is what I was after and hadn’t noticed the setting before, which of course caused the transposition of the instrument to show, no matter what I named it.

So, for others who are reading through the thread, the setting is in Layout Options → Staves and Systems

Attached is a screenshot of it.

Hello everybody.
I know this is an old thread, but my question is related, so here goes.
Is there an easier way to edit player names than to open the little dialog by pressing the 3 dots and then navigate to edit names???
I have a made a 5 part arrangement for my concert band and I would like to write which part each player is playing in the score. Like this: Clarinet 1 - Part 1.
But the way you can do it now, is very cumbersome, slow and takes a lot of navigating with the mouse (I find it incredible I don’t have carpal tunnel syndrome yet).
Is there an easier way?

No, there isn’t.

Hmm… and a lot of other words that would get me banned.

It may comfort you to know there have been past requests for some sort of bulk-editing of player names. So it’s on their radar.

2 Likes