I’m working on an orchestra piece that features a number doubling instruments (2 flutes - 1st doubling piccolo; 2 clarinet - 2nd doubling bass clarinet, etc.). I placed those pairs of staves into groups of players (see an attached screenshot taken from the Setup screen of the clarinet section).
Could anyone advise on how to enable Dorico to list ALL instruments on the first page of the full score, even if some of the instruments are not featured at the very beginning of the piece? For example, my orchestra piece features only the Bass Clarinet at the beginning, and Clarinet 1 comes in later; it may be helpful to display both of them on the first page (see the second screenshot taken from the Print mode). Note that the condensing feature is not active at this time.
Welcome to the forum, Zvony. I assume you mean that you would like the staff label at the start of the score to show the doublings, rather than that you want an additional staff to appear? At the moment Dorico doesn’t have an automatic feature for doing that, though it’s a good idea and I will make a note of it. For the time being you can work around this by editing the staff labels for the first instrument held by the player in the Edit Names dialog, described here.
Thanks, Daniel. I appreciate your quick response, which I found to be very helpful! I’ll check out the Edit Names dialogue.
In the meantime, to answer your question, I think I’d like to have the additional (empty) Clarinet 1 staff appear, but on the first page only. Given that the piece employs only two clarinets (Clarinet 1 and Clarinet 2 that doubles Bass Clarinet), I thought it may be useful to have both Clarinets appear on the first page of the full score, even when it’s only the Bass Clarinet that starts off the piece. I understand if this may not be possible yet. Might it be worth the effort to explore the condensing feature for these purposes? Thank you once again!
If the two instruments are held by the same player and you want instrument changes to be used later on after the first page of music, then I’m afraid this can’t be done: Dorico either creates instrument changes everywhere, in which case only a single staff will appear on the first page and elsewhere, with the currently-played instrument being the one that appears at any given point, or it will show both instruments throughout. I think it’s a bit non-standard to show two staves on the first system in any case, because that could lead to the confusion about how many players there really are in the ensemble.
Go to galley mode and enter a dummy note on the other instrument. In the Properties panel, enable Suppress Playback and set the Alpha Channel to 0 under the Color option. This will force the first system to show.
