Wavy line not showing in part etc

My intention was to notate a series of bars in which the percussionist is instructed to play random notes with glockenspiel mallets on a bell tree. I have got as far as creating the wavy line which I reckoned would serve as showing the duration of the action:


Then I intended to remove the rests and write a suitable description. But - the rests refuse to be removed (even if I select all the rests for every instrument in the Percussion player list for the bars in question). When I checked against the part, in case they were removed there, I saw that the wavy line wasnā€™t shown at all:
image
Evidently Iā€™m going about this the wrong way. How should I be achieving what Iā€™m looking for?

Dear Gareth,
Have you tried inputting explicit rests and ā€œhidingā€ them (with the 1% and opacity to none workaround)? Another useful trick to break the multibar rests is to input some unbreakable spaces with shift-x tool not on the first beat (simply advance the caret to the next quaver or crotchet). Multirests cannot be hidden, AFAIK. Those workarounds have helped me a lot last week :wink:

Thanks, Marc - Iā€™ll give that a try. In fact, after reading your reply I experimentally hid one barful of explicit rests using the only command I knew (Remove Rests) and it worked. I havenā€™t come across the workaround you mention.
I can see, from what you say, that I wouldnā€™t be able to hide that multirest - is that the reason why the wavy line doesnā€™t show there? Iā€™ll get down to implementing the ā€˜useful trickā€™!

I think fundamentally the problem is that you need something explicit in order to a) break the multibar rests and b) switch to whichever instrument. A Line, by itself, wonā€™t do either of those things.

If explicit(ly removed) bar rests donā€™t do the trick, try putting a Chord Symbol region on those few bars (Write > Chord Symbol Region). This should work whether or not you actually have chord symbols in the project (Iā€™m guessing not), and is invisible on the page.

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Thanks, Leo. Your method certainly allows the wavy line to show, but it also shows the bar rests (which still wonā€™t hide using ā€˜Remove Restsā€™), so Iā€™ve just tried a combination of your solution and Marcā€™s - that gives me my wiggly line and no rests, but the empty bars are squashed together in the part, so it looks like I need some ā€˜paddingā€™ (in the way I used to do with Sibelius, with notes that I then hid). Iā€™ve been able to do this using ā€˜hide stemā€™ and a zero in the Color section, and that seems to have worked.

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