Players not appearing in score

I’m really leery that I’m missing some obvious setting, but I’m experiencing something that’s never happened before, and I’m up to nearly two dozen Dorico projects. I’ve searched the forum, and I can’t find anything there, so I’m asking you.

I have a clarinet quartet score, and the commissioning person asked me to provide three Eb parts in addition to the standard Bb parts.

I added the three extra players, and I added a new layout, which is supposed to be my Full Score (as opposed to my Print Score, which only has the Bb parts.) When I selected the Full Score layout on the right and checkboxed the three additional parts on the left, they didn’t show up in the score. I checked and unchecked them, but no go.

I even opened the print score to look at that, and I added (checked) the three Eb parts to that layout, but it had no effect. Checking and unchecking the four Bb parts (the original four parts) worked just as it should—they disappeared and reappeared in both scores. But the three new Eb parts won’t show up anywhere.

Oh, and when I look at any of those three parts individually, nothing at all is there; no title, no staves no nothing, just a big blue square where all the content should be.

I’d appreciate any ideas or help you can offer.

Thanks much, as always.

This sounds like the new players aren’t assigned to any flows. I have no idea why that would be… If you select the new players on the left, are any flows in the bottom panel checked?

Thanks, fketlow. Tried it by deleting the Eb players and reinstalling them, making sure the flow was checked, but they still don’t actually show up in the music, nor is there even a staff into which you could paste music. There’s just nothing except a big blue background-like box if you choose that staff in the dropdown menu to take a look at it.

Have you tried Galley View in write mode?

If you have “hide all empty staves” including the first system of each flow switched on, then you won’t see anything in Page View till you enter some notes, but you can’t enter any notes because you can’t see the staves.

Galley View always shows all the staves (unless you have found a bug in the program rather than making a user error!)

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Thanks for the suggestion, Rob, but no go. I tried galley view, and nothing there. If I turned the original players on and off, they appear and disappear in Galley View just as in Page View.

And I checked just to be sure, but I had Hide Empty Staves set to Never.

I’m beginning to wonder if I have a corrupted file or something. The thing is, everything else appears to be working fine.

A little more info: I tried starting a brand new project. I imported the flow from the first project, thinking maybe that would fix it, even though I knew I’d be giving up all the page layout work I’d done. However, same problem—adding parts only added them in Setup Mode, but not in the actual parts.

Can you attach the project here so we can take a look, Lew? Otherwise we’re just flying blind.

Hi, Daniel,

Here’s the project. As you’ll see, I’ve added a string bass part to the mix, but it shows up nowhere. It’s not part of the score, and if you select that part from the dropdown, all you get is a blue square.

I’m guessing I’m overlooking something obvious, but I’m darned if I can figure it out.

So thanks for your help.

[Edit] I forgot to tell you the one thing that’s different with this project from all my others—the original four voices were imported as a musicxml file out of either Finale or Sibelius; I can’t remember which. I’ve never had this problem with any other Dorico project.
Forum Example.dorico.zip (1.71 MB)

The version of the project you’ve attached contains only the three clarinets, I think – I can’t see your new Eb clarinets or the extra full score layout. Did you attach the version you meant to attach?

Hi, Daniel,

You’re right—this is a smaller version, because I gave up on the Eb parts and did them in a separate project. But this one demonstrates the problem.

You mention that the project I sent you contains “only the three clarinets.” It should be showing, in Setup Mode, 3 Bb clarinets, a bass clarinet, and a part called Bass, which is a standard double bass. Of those five parts, only the first four appear in the score.

That’s the problem—ANY part that I try to add fails to appear in the score, even though in Setup Mode, it’s checked off as being part of the score layout. I’m assuming that if you, in looking at this, try to add parts to the project, they also will not appear in the score.

Per my edit to my post above, this has only happened to me once, in this musicxml import. At this point, I’m prepared to accept that that’s the answer; there’s a bug in the original xml export out of Finale (I was able to run that down—it was Finale, not Sibelius) or in the import process into Dorico. My larger concern was that I was missing something in the way I was adding parts.

As far as I can see, the Bass is not assigned to a flow.

In Setup Mode open the Flows panel at the bottom. Select your flow “GRINCH”. Then check the “Bass” in the Players Section at the left.

The Bass will appear in your score and as a part.

Thomas

Well, for crying out loud. That fixed it; I had no idea you had to have the flow selected to add voices to the score.

fkretlow, you noticed they weren’t connected, but I didn’t follow up on that because I didn’t really know what to do about it.

Anyway, THANKS, Thomas, and for everyone else who took a look at this.

Lew

Well, you don’t add voices to the SCORE. You add them to individual flows. The flows don’t all have to contain the same voices!

(Actually “voices” is the wrong word - you mean “players”, but never mind!)

Yep, you’re right, Rob. I went into it with the wrong mindset, and it screwed me up.

On the other hand, my first reaction to finding out what a simple fix it was was to think that I’d never have had to go through all that if we had a step-by-step manual…

I know it’s being written, and it can’t get here a day too soon.

Well, I hope it isn’t only a “step by step” manual. Documentation like “How to save a file: in the File menu, select the Save option” is easy to write, but if people can’t figure that out for themselves, maybe the program isn’t aimed at them! (That’s not meant as a personal criticism of anyone, of course.)

What we really need is the concepts explained well - then the “step by step” procedures are usually fairly obvious.

I get what you’re saying, Rob, and I don’t disagree. But there’s an important difference between understanding basic OS tasks and understanding application tasks. I wasted all this time because I didn’t know a flow had to be selected before I could make a voice appear in the score; and though it’s true that you add players to flows to make voices appear in scores, making a voice appear in a score was my end goal, my frame of reference, and the wording I’d be searching for in a manual.

The very basic step, “Click on a flow to select it, then click the checkboxes of the players…[etc]” is in fact what I needed to see somewhere.

And to be clear, I still accept the possibility that I should have picked this up by now. But even after using Sibelius nearly daily for 12 years, I still had to pull out the pdf manual occasionally just to remember how to do some basic task I’d done many times before, but not lately. Sometimes “Select the item whatsit in the whozit menu”, basic though that might be, is exactly what I need. And despite my advanced years, I daresay I’m not the only one. :slight_smile:

It also works the other way around. Click on a player to select it, then click the checkboxes of the flows. Likewise with all the combinations of layouts and players and flows. Beautifully simple, once you get the hang of it!

Yes, for sure. Once you guys clued me in, I started experimenting, and you’re right—“beautifully simple” describes it perfectly.

I am pretty sure the behaviour of Setup mode is well explained in some Dorico’s video… :wink:

Well… yes and no. I just spent an hour running down the same problem. Now that I know, it’s easy. I just re-watched the “how to work in setup mode” video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOuSFc7TF8M

In the video, new parts are automatically attached to a flow. But who would notice this if you weren’t looking for it? The video, helpful as it is, doesn’t explain this vital connection of players to flow.

For some reason the score I’m working on doesn’t attach new parts to a flow by default. (it is an imported xml) Yet if I create a new project, new players are automatically connected. Again - simple now. Regret spending an hour looking for this solution on the heels of spending several hours trying to get default page sizes set to US Letter only to realize it ain’t gonna happen.

But I’m invested in Dorico, love the product it promises to be. Just had to get my rant out there.