I join some other examples where changing lines is functional (when I say functional I mean that the notation helps the musician to perfectly fit with the kind of sound he/she has to produce; i.e. it’s useless to employ 5 lines staff if there’s some other kind of sound techniques implied).
Examples are taken from:
Berio’s A-Ronne, for 8 voices. The different vocal behaviors are functionally represented with changing lines.
some of my percussion or orchestral music (you can find staff changes in strings, brasses and percussion)
This feature can be used also when a percussionist has to change from one instrument to another. Of course the percussion staff in Dorico is a really good alternative, nevertheless in several percussion scores, you can find this kind of staff changes.
Another interesting feature is that staff styles allows also to dynamically change the names in the staff. This can be used, for example, when an instrument put on mutes. This can be seen in the abbreviated staff name (you can find the mute indication in the trumpet and strings names in the last file attached).
Sorry for all this material but I hope this helps clarifying what I’m talking about.
Thanks for the examples, Lorenzo. As I indicated to Luis in earlier replies in this thread, I understand the requirements and we’ll think about how best to meet these needs in the future.
Forgive me if this is slightly off-topic for this thread, but a link in another thread brought me here. While this is certainly not related to the circumstances you are discussing, staves with different numbers of lines are very common in modern band music for percussion parts. I use them frequently in my marching band arrangements, but I have seen them in concert arrangements as well (denoting 3 different sizes of concert toms, for example). For marching bands, most publishers print marching tenor and bass line parts for 4-pitches, but on a 3-line staff (using the spaces above, below and inside the lines as the 4 pitches). I would be very interested in the ability to “turn on/off” staff lines when setting up percussion kits.
Unless I’m missing something this creates a staff line for each drum. You can change where the note sits in relation to the line (above, on, or below), but you can’t have fewer lines than you have instruments. A part with 4 drums will have 4 lines, which is not what I’m looking for, and not typically how published arrangements are written.
A line can have a note hanging, sitting or on it, so one instrument can play the part of three. Yes, it will be a sole instrument, thus circumventing Dorico’s attempt to have everything neat from a conceptual standpoint, but neater than what you would do in S or F, like it seemed you asked for before.
Yes, but that doesn’t allow me to have 4 instruments on a 3-line staff, which is what I’m looking for. Probably the solution is the option to hide staff lines when you’re setting up a kit, or else to just be able to specify the number of lines you want for that kit.
I can’t speak for Sibelius, as I don’t use it, but Finale lets me specify the number of lines when setting up a percussion map (their equivalent to a “kit”). It’s very straight-forward, unlike most things in Finale.
I want to start by saying, I love what you have done with Dorico. It is great music software and I’m going to stick with it for a while!
I’m a little surprised that a staff style change is not possible with Dorico (for exemple: going from a 5 line melodic staff to a 1 line rhythmical non pitched staff), considering all the other advanced features you have at your disposal with Dorico, it’s a little bit shocking. I know I am not a software engineer and I know it could be a difficult task, but a lot of other notation software (some that are even free) have a staff preference option to change the number of lines for a staff. I think that just having a relatively small feature like a “staff preference tool” would be a nice quality of life change for modern composers like myself (I am not referring to a playback option for this feature, only for the score). Being able to change the number of lines in a staff would be great.
It’s not called a “staff style change” - it’s one player holding two instruments, and Dorico automatically switches between them. Is this not what you want?
Welcome to the forum, Jano. In addition to what Leo has said, I will add that we do plan to add features to change the number of staff lines for an instrument in future versions, but provided you are looking for the most common use case, i.e. doubling instruments, that is already fully handled.
I wanted to ask if there are any developments in this topic. I searched around, but couldn’t find anything clear.
I’m trying to notate something like this violin section, and I can’t make the elements in b10 etc. work, because they’re not over/on a staff line in the percussion kit I created.
You can indeed work around this, sort of, though it’s not new. You can edit the instruments.xml file to change one of your unused instruments to a 3-line staff. Then the viola player would hold this second instrument and switch to it when needed.
The only bit I don’t know how to accomplish is that the three-line staff would not be more widely spaced to fill the same space as the 5-line staff.
that’s a good idea - although I’m all up for hacks, unfortunately the file will be sent to other people, and it would have to be compatible with a normal system. But I’ll have a closer look at the possibilities.
This should actually not be a problem. It is my understanding that most library items get their distinct (Project-internal) instantiation once they are actually put to use in a Project. Thus they become independent from their original library data. (On the flipside, this makes it almost impossible to retroactively change any custom-made item already in use if the relevant property can only be set through xml editing and not from within the program itself.)
