"Hide instrument name if there is only one instrument" is not working

• Jan 3, 2022 - 16:57

Hi folks!

Normally this feature works perfectly for me. But for this particular score, it's not. I tried removing a bunch of instruments and measures to trim it down, but the problem is still reproducible.

To be clear, when it says "there is only one instrument", it always has meant "there is only one VISIBLE instrument", which is perfect. If I want to export just the piano portion of the score, I don't need to run onto multiple pages because I'm wasting space at the left of every system saying "Piano". I get a nice compact output without and instrument name.

Also, please don't suggest deleting the Long/Short instrument name from the system. I don't want that data to be lost. When there are multiple instruments visible I WANT the instrument name to display. But when I export just a solo score, I want it to temporarily disappear. And that's the way it always works.

Except in the attached score.

I did try fully deleting the other instruments (not just making them visible) in a test copy of this score, and that does indeed hide the instrument name. But obviously, I don't want to delete the other instruments.

Can you please help me figure out what's odd about this score so I can get it to behave properly?

Thanks!

Attachment Size
TEST.mscz 24.56 KB

Comments

There are in fact two instruments - look at [Edit]>[Instruments]. If you want to export just the flute or piano part alone, first make the flute part visible in [Edit]>[Instruments], then create parts for them. See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/parts#setup-all-parts. The single instrument parts will not show the instrument names if the option is ticked in [Format]>[Style]>[Score].

See the attached example and come back if you need further help. TEST With Parts.mscz

In reply to by SteveBlower

Thanks for the reply.

> There are in fact two instruments

Yes, but there is only one VISIBLE instrument. What you're proposing is what I already said I tried, and it's not working. Here's a screen shot showing that I have already ticked this checkbox and you can see that the instrument name of the only (one) instrument is still showing.

problem.png
only one visible instrument.png

In reply to by reggoboy

Look at the example in my reply. In particular click on the tabs to show the individual piano and flute parts.

The visibility has no impact on the number of instruments in the score. They are there even when you can't see them. You have to create parts that contain only single instruments. Follow the link that I included. That describes what parts are and how to create them.

In reply to by SteveBlower

Okay, thanks. I didn't know anything about Parts. That's an extremely cool feature and it's going to be helpful and make my life easier.

However :-) my question still stands. I have always used that "Hide" checkbox along with the "Visible" checkbox to effectively create parts and, most relevant to this post, hide the instrument name when only one instrument was visible. That always worked. If you're trying to say that that's not what that feature is for, then I'm curious if it was working "by mistake" until a recent update?

In any case, the Parts feature solves my problem even better than getting this other behavior back, so it's not worth any more of my time trying to find that answer.

Thanks for the tip about Parts!

In reply to by reggoboy

Which feature are you asking about?

The feature of hiding staves is things like for having a playback staff that doesn't appear in the score - say, a staff in which you write out a solo that for the notation you show only slash marks for improvisation, or where you've written out some ornament that yo show only with a symbol.

The feature of hiding staff names for single staves is mostly so parts work as expected - the staff name should appear on the score, should not appear n the part. We could have simply made it so staff names don't show on parts, but that's not quite right - sometimes you have a part for two instruments and you do want the staff names, or you have a lead sheet with only one staff that is not a part and you don't. So tying to number of instruments makes more sense.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Hey Marc, thanks for the reply.

See my screen shot above. I’m referring to the “Hide Instrument name of there is only one
Instrument“ checkbox. My question is not at all about Parts since I didn’t even know about Parts. What I remember working was :

  1. Create a score with multiple instruments.
  2. My way of doing parts was to make all by one instrument invisible.
  3. At that point what I recall was using “Hide Instrument name of there is only one
    Instrument“ checkbox to remove the instrument names to the left of the staves. Then I could export pdf and basically achieve “parts”
  4. Then I’d go make them all visible again.

But now, checking that box leaves all those labels visible even when only one instrument is visible. I don’t recall this working that way before. But now that I know about parts, the issue matters less. But I wanted to report it anyway.

In reply to by reggoboy

Yes, and as I explained, the purpose of that option is to make parts, and lead sheets, work as expected. So the behavior of the option is designed to produce the expected results in those cases. If there was a bug that caused staff names to be hidden even though there were multiple staves present, that would have been adversely affecting people using this option for its intended purpose, but indeed, it seems fixed now. meaning it's not working as well when used for things other than its intended purpose, but it was never supposed to be used that way or to have produced that result.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Gotcha. Makes sense.

> If there was a bug that caused staff names to be hidden even though there were multiple staves present, that would have been adversely affecting people using this option for its intended purpose

I’d be curious who would actually want to see the instrument name precede every staff when that’s the only instrument visible on the screen 😅

I've got this same problem. Weirdly it's not a problem on ALL files, only some. "Hide part name" just doesn't work. Using 4.2. So annoying.

In reply to by Clt2022

Note the original thread is from several years ago and is about an older version of MsueScore that worked differently. Also, please read the responses to the original "problem", which was actually just a misunderstanding over how the option works. Then if the responses don't clarify that misunderstanding for you, definitely do attach your score and give precise steps to reproduce the problem.

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