Mid-staff change of staff name
I am trying, in a full opera sore, to have several soloists on one line, with the possibility of changing the staff display name when the part changes.
I have not achieved it yet - "change instrument" text that I inserted at the beginning of the first singer's part seemed to change the properties of the whole staff from the beginning. However, on the next page, the display name is "T." (for tenor) which I have not chosen in the staff properties at all.
What I want is this: 1) to have, in the beginning of the score, a general name for the staff (including several character's names); 2) and then start changing the staff properties as each character enters, so that the short display name for the staff on the next name would include the short name for only the character who is singing on that page.
Can this be done? "Change instrument" text does not seem to do that, but is there a way?
(In the file, the part where I tried was "Jannsen, Harry", and the first entrance is in bar 6.
I am open to other good solutions as well.
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| Emajõe ööbikud - 1. stseen - partituur.mscz | 19.03 KB |
Comments
Use different staves for the soloists and then use "Hide empty staves"
In reply to Use different staves for the… by Jojo-Schmitz
Thank you, I have thought of that as well. It is not my favourite option since they are changing so often that it would mean both staves on every page anyway. But maybe this is how I will end up doing it.
I can also mark the entrances of characters with staff text, of course, but I was hoping that the staff short name at the beginning of each page could also be showing the character that is singing at the beginning of the page, which seems not to be possible.
What I have now understood with other instrument changes as well is that:
while you can change properties of staff/part, changing settings like range, short and full display name, transposition, ...; you can not do it any more after using the "change instrument" text. This function does change the instrument on that line, but after that, you have no control over what that instrument is called or what transposition it uses. That would be a nice additional feature and would give added convenience.
As it is, in some cases I think I will use more staves than I planned (three staves for one player's soprano, alto and baritone saxophone instead of one, since the transposition cannot be controlled on one), and in soloists' cases, I will use (staff) expression texts for the character names and generic short name for the staff, like SA solo or T solo. But it would be nice to change the character name where it enters and have this character's short name turn up at the beginning of the staff on the next page.
In reply to What I have now understood… by lppoja
This is being discussed at #278016: Add pitched/unpitched (and more staff properties) to Staff Type Change. At least I proposed that it be part of that fix.
In reply to What I have now understood… by lppoja
The way to achieve this right now is with a custom instruments.xml file that includes new "instruments" named "Janssen, Harry", etc. or, you can save your score as MSCX (or extra the MSCX fro the MSCZ ZIP archive) and edit the names there.
I agree we need a better solution. Exposing instrument names in the Inspector seems the obvious possibility, but there is also some discussion of how instrument changes and staff type changes could be better integrated - see for instance #284875: Integrate instrument and staff type changes.
In reply to The way to achieve this… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you! Custom instruments file seems to have achieved what I needed.
This is 1 year old, but I'd like to ask: was this solved in this middletime?
Because in 3.4.2 I can add an Instrument Change to a staff (i.e. Harry) and then I can right-click after the Instrument Change to edit the part's long name and short name, and from then on that's what the staff shows. Am I missing something?
In reply to This is 1 year old, but I'd… by elerouxx
I believe this was fixed in 3.3. You can now change instrument names after an instrument change and they stick.