Switching Instruments

First time posting. New Dorico user from Finale.
I have seen pages on how to assign two instruments to a player, go into Gallery View to see both instruments, and how if you enter in notes for the second instrument, when returning to Page View, it collapses the two instruments, so it appears as though the player has switched the instrument, and it is all done on a single staff.

I am entering a two staff piano part, where I would like for the right hand to switch to a harpsichord sound for a few measures, then switch back. I would like for this to remain as two staves, and if anything write text to inform the player to switch right hand to harpsichord sound.

Is there any way to do this?

Two possible ways, neither of which is as smooth as Dorico’s native way with single-staff instruments.

  1. One can set aside different voices in the piano’s upper staff and channel those to the Harpsichord sound. Indicating via staff text when the player is to switch. The down side is to keep all the voices straight; use show voice colors to try to keep them straight, and realize that Dorico erases any voices not used when one saves and restarts the program; so keep an eye on the voice colors when returning to work.
  2. One can write everything on the shown piano part and use a separate staff to produce the sounds of the harpsichord. Suppress playback of the harpsichord notes in the shown piano staff, and then manually hide the staff producing the harpsichord sounds.

As I said, neither of these is as idiomatic as Dorico’s built-in method for a player swapping single-staff instruments. Best of luck.

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I think if you want to simply indicate that the right-hand staff should change to a harpsichord sound, I’d not use an instrument change at all – instead, as @Derrek suggests, simply write everything on the existing piano instrument, and add text instructions to show where the player should switch sounds.

If you also want to hear the right sounds in playback, you can use independent voice playback to be able to assign an extra VST instrument to your piano instrument. You can then write the passage that should play back using a harpsichord sound using a different voice in the right-hand staff. Provided you keep which voice(s) you’re using straight, it’s easy enough to assign each voice to the desired sound in Play mode.

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I did as you said, and it worked great. I added text to indicate an instrument change, then highlighted the measures in question, assigned to a new voice, then changed the channel for that voice.

Thank you both.

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