Resolved - Certain single-bar rests won't hide

Dorico
1

I’m trying to hide the rests shown here:

Dorico rests.jpg
This is the treble staff of a piano part. The bass staff is empty and has been hidden.

In the first and third bars, I was able to hide the rest by activating the Color property and setting Opacity to 0%.

In the second and fourth bars, that doesn’t work.

This is the “solos” section of a jazz piece. The goal is to have chord symbols over empty measures.

I realize this is different from the standard practice of having the measures poulated with slashes. Leaving them empty was suggested to me by a well-known jazz artist. It allows space for the individual musician to jot down ideas during a rehearsal or recording session.

How can I hide these rests? Or is there another way to get empty measures under the chord symbols?

Apologies in advance if this has already been discussed. I’ve spent a lot of time searching to no avail.

2

Click on the rests, Edit—>Remove Rests.

3

I tried that. Rests remain selected and nothing happens.

4

Oh, sorry. Here it is: Layout Options, Players, Show/Hide rests in empty bars.

5

Aready tried that, too. I just now toggled it back on (then “apply”, and close) and then off again, but it didn’t help.

I’ve also tried “starts voice” and “ends voice” in the treble staff of the first bar of the song and the last bar before the “solos” section, respectively, and that didn’t help.

Any other ideas?

6

Err… I’m sure that works. Did you select the correct layout when you tried it?

7

Yep. Double and triple-checked!

8

Ok, you may have “Start voice” and “end voice” activated somewhere. Check that through the Properties panel.

9

bobk,
a possible workaround (haven’t tested it myself): if you input crotchet (quarter note) rests via force duration, may be those rests can be hidden with “remove rests”??

10

I checked both before and after that passage, and there’s no “start voice” and “end voice” in either location.

I just now tried that, and it worked in the score. In the piano part, I wasn’t able to get quarter rests - only the measure rest.

11

bobk, in case you started with an musicxml import, select and delete the double bar line. Then re input it again. Sometimes these hiccups can get fixed that way.

12

Now that you mention it, I did start with musicxml import. I’d forgotten.

I deleted both the double bar lines and re-input them. Unfortunately, that didn’t help - I still can’t delete the rests.

13

Arg. Can you post the project here for us to try?

14

See attached.

I couldn’t post the original for copyright reasons, so I duplicated it, removed bars (containing notes) before and after this section, and altered the chord symbols. (I didn’t remove any measures in this section or any chord symbols.) The problem remains.

Thanks in advance for checking it out!

Bob
Hide rests problem.dorico.zip (413 KB)

15

Hello Bob,
you will have to set the Consolidate option to NONE and everything is as expected…

16

That worked - but why?

What exactly does this option do in this case, where I was able to hide other measure rests?

I checked the reference and did Google searches and couldn’t find an explanation.

Thanks!

17

If you have an entirely empty bar - in a part layout - Dorico treats it like a multirest. If it has a chord symbol then it’s not an empty bar.

18

This implies that multirests cannot be hidden - correct?

And if so, what does the “Consolidate” option have to do with it? There was nothing to Consolidate - just some single bars containing bar rests.

Is is that setting Consolidate to “none” means that Dorico no longer considers these as multi-bar rests, and therefore allows the rests to be hidden?

I’m trying to understand the underlying concepts, but am not there yet.

Thanks!

19

In orchestral parts, it’s quite common to see a “1” over a single bar rest, just as you’d see a “2” over a two-bar multirest or a “4” over a four-bar multirest.

As such, if rests are set to consolidate then even single empty bars are treated (consolidated) as multirests (and there’s an option to show a “1” over it). You can’t hide the multirest as it’s not a real rest; it’s an object that, in one-bar multirest situations, happens to look identical to a regular bar rest.

20

There is an Engraving Option to make it look like any other multirest, with an H-bar, if you want.

It doesn’t make sense to hide multirests in general, because the player wouldn’t know how long to rest.