Hey everybody,
As a funk arranger I often write for pianists using only one staff, while indicating kicks, slashes and so on - no need for the bass staff.
Is there an option to use piano as an instrument using one staff only?
(So far I’ve been using a flute, changing the name and the sound, but I’m sure there’s a better way)
Thank you very much!
You can create a piano as normal, then select a rest in the left-hand staff and choose Edit > Staff > Remove Staff.
Hi Daniel, I’m trying to accomplish the same thing and am going mad searching for Remove Staff. It’s nowhere to be found in the Edit menu in Write mode. There’s only a Staff Size submenu in the Edit menu. I’ve followed the instructions exactly as explained in the help file (https://steinberg.help/dorico_pro/v3/en/dorico/topics/notation_reference/notation_reference_staves_extra_deleting_t.html?hl=delete%2Cstaff). Also, I’ve tried both the Full Score and Piano flows. I’ve even tried creating a new piano score from scratch. Surely there must be an easy way to do something so basic, or maybe I’m blind to the obvious.
Looks like it must have been a bug in Dorico 3.0.0. Just updated to 3.0.10 and Staff > Remove Staff is now in the menu in Write mode.
A related issue: For part of a piece, I’ve removed the upper staff of a piano part, leaving just the bottom staff. However, when I try to add pedal markings, they don’t appear on the score — not in page view, and not in galley view. Does anyone know what’s going on here?
For various boring technical reasons, pedal lines are always attached to the top staff of the piano, and then drawn below the bottom staff, but if that staff is removed, all of the things attached to it won’t be processed. This is a bit unfortunate. Are you able to hide the lower staff instead and make it appear that the upper staff is the lower one by adding a clef change?
Good to know. If I add and remove staves only at system breaks, this should be a fine workaround. But if I want to add or remove a staff in the middle of a system, this would look funny. Are there any plans to change this behavior in the future?
Not concrete plans, as such, but it’s certainly not impossible that we will change this in future.
I think the lesson here is that one-stave piano writing requires using the top stage throughout with clef changes as appropriate.
Just wanted to mention if chord symbols are set to display between staves, they won’t appear at all if only the top piano staff appears, so this isn’t necessarily a complete workaround.