Piano Score - How to switch lower stave from bass clef to treble

Hi, I’m sure I’m missing something obvious. In a piano score, I just want the lower stave to be in treble clef for a few bars, and then back to bass clef, as both left and right hand play in the upper range. If I click the button for treble clef and click on the lower stave, it just makes a second treble clef on the upper stave, and leaves the lower as a bass clef. I’ve searched the forum, but haven’t found any entries that deal with what I assume must be a pretty common operation. What am I missing? Thanks.

Invoke the caret.
Use the up/down arrows to ensure that it is on the correct stave.
Type Shift-C g Enter (or Shift-C treble Enter, if you prefer).

Without seeing your project it’s difficult to know why clicking and dropping from the panel isn’t working; the most likely explanation is that a note is present at that rhythmic location that belongs to the upper staff. Using the caret removes any ambiguity.

Thanks, pianoleo. That doesn’t seem to work, because when I put the caret on the upper stave and then go down with the arrow, it skips to the next note system, ie. the next page in this case. It must have to do with the fact that the upper and lower staves are in different voices, as that’s the only way I’ve found to organize the left and right hand parts to separate staves. In the example, the lower stave notes are red, the upper ones blue (or yellow, because the caret is placed in that bar). But there must be a way to place the caret in the lower stave.
Screen Shot 2020-05-25 at 12.15.51.png

Simply hitting the down arrow really should move the caret to the lower staff, but even if it doesn’t (and I’d need to see the file to know why) then double-clicking on the lower staff will show the caret there.

Thanks, Daniel. I assumed that double-clicking on the lower staff would place the caret there, but it doesn’t! It always jumps to the upper, and with the down arrow always skips to the next system. Should I send you the project?

Sure, zip it up and attach it here. If you can cut it down to just a few bars that exhibit the problem, that would be best.

Here it is, totally unfinished. The bar I was trying to change the bass clef to treble was 47, but it’s the same anywhere I try it. I just updated to version 3.01.10, but the problem remained.
Piano Sketch.dorico.zip (779 KB)

I’m not sure what you did, but somehow you’d managed to get the voices on the piano staff so confused to the point that Dorico couldn’t work out how to navigate to the other staff. I’ve sorted out the voices in the project now, and you should find everything works as expected from now on.
Piano Sketch.dorico.zip (626 KB)

Yes, I haven’t got a handle on the voice system yet. In this case I wanted two voices to split on the two staves, but it kept switching in the “Change voice” menu which was the first and which was the second. That’ll take more practice. Thanks, Daniel.

Turn on View—Voice Colors to help keep you from unpleasant surprises, at least until you get more comfortable with voice management.

If you just move the cursor to the right staff and enter notes, you will automatically get different voices (displayed in different colours) on each staff, but Dorico names the voices on each staff starting with “up/down stem voice 1”.

This isn’t very interesting most of the time, except when you have cross-staff notes. In that case, the colours help you to keep track of which staff the notes really belong to.

Yes, I get the impression the voice titles change places in the “change voice” menu list, and I think at one point I saw two “Upstem Voice 1”, but it could well have been my own confusion…then red was up and blue was down, then back again. I think the trick is, if at one point you’re not sure which voice is which, not to continue until you’ve figured it out. Because then you can get more twists, and not figure it out later. Thanks again, Daniel, Dorico is great.

The note entry caret shows you which voice you are working in, by the direction of the stem on the icon and a number if it is greater than 1.

Also, if you select a note or rest the status bar at the bottom left of the screen shows the voice.