Hiding empty staves
Well, so I switched this on, since my latest effort (Fl, Cl, Piano) has a piano solo section in the middle. Really I only want to hide both Fl and Cl when both are empty, and in the piano score I never want to hide the piano. Is there a clever way of doing this? If not, I accept that as being fussy, but:
Problem: a line has only treble notes in the piano part, and MS has therefore hidden the bass clef. I don't think this is expected behaviour; the "grand staff" is a single unit, and should either be there or not. I know that there are complications: if the piano part uses three or four staves, would it be obvious quite which to hide? But, surely, you just hide until there are a minimum of two.
Comments
You can set a staff to never hide in its staff properties
But to not hide e.g. Fl. it it is empty but Cl is not is not possible, unless you use invisible (and silent) notes (in a voice other than 1)
In reply to You can set a staff to never… by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes, I can see it is possible to set hide or not per staff, and I understand that asking for special treatment for two parts like flute and clarinet is a bit unreasonable. So I have to use the visibility kludge: why a voice other than 1? What about cues? If I make a cue invisible, this suggests it may mess up the empty staff hiding. Are you saying that voices 1 and !1 are treated differently?
In reply to Yes, I can see it is… by Imaginatorium
Yes, voice 1 rests can not get delete (not without shortening the measure at least) all other can
In reply to Yes, voice 1 rests can not… by Jojo-Schmitz
Sorry, I cannot understand your answer. I understand what it says, but not the connection to my question. I understand the first part of your original answer to say that it is not possible to make hiding (say) the clarinet be conditional on the flute also being empty, and I understand that. So I think this means I have to write an "invisible" note on each staff that I want to prevent from being hidden. But I do not understand why you say "in a voice other than 1".
In reply to Sorry, I cannot understand… by Imaginatorium
Because you want to keep the voice 1 full measure rest
For the piano, if you never want to hide it, right click each staff and set the Hide when empty option to never. If you want to retain the option of hiding the entire instrument when both staves are empty (like during a flute cadenza) set the Hide when empty option to instrument on each staff.
In reply to For the piano, if you never… by mike320
For the next week or two I'm still on version 2; I guess this "instrument" thing is new in version 3? But one of my points was that I think it is extremely nonstandard ever (almost; I do have one score...) to reduce the piano to a single staff. Do I have to say that somewhere else on the grounds that it is not "support"?
In reply to For the next week or two I'm… by Imaginatorium
The instrument option is indeed new for MuseScore 3. But it's not rare to want that at all. Quite common for instruments that sometimes take one but sometimes two staves (eg, marimba), or for piano in a jazz context where portions for the arrangement are just chord symbols, or for a staff that temporarily splits into two (a solo staff on the first violin part), etc.
In reply to The instrument option is… by Marc Sabatella
(Thanks - I have just got version 3 running.) You may be right that it is more common than I thought to want a single staff for piano, but I still think it is not expected behaviour for a "grand staff" to get chopped in half. That is solved by the "instrument" setting (incidentally, the "Auto" in that menu is opaque: it used to say "not the first system", which I think it what it means).
But it would be nice functionality, and surely not too hard to implement, to allow "pseudo-instruments" (like SATB as a classic example) which were either completely hidden or not. That would cover most accompanied choral works very nicely. (Vastly better than Oxford, for example)
In reply to (Thanks - I have just got… by Imaginatorium
The "auto" setting for a staff simply means it obeys overall score style settings for hide empty staves. The other settings are all overrides to the style setting.
And yes, it would in principle be possible to add yet another option here, something like "bracketed group" maybe?
In reply to The instrument option is… by Marc Sabatella
Hey Marc, sorry to revive an old thread instead of making a new one, but this came up high in my google search & might be relevant for people find it that way.
Is there an option to toggle hiding for one staff of the grand staff but not the other? So, in a score where the piano has a few written parts, mostly comps, and occasionally lays out. I don't want it to disappear in the full score when it's resting, just take up less space like when it's comping.
In reply to Hey Marc, sorry to revive an… by abnyc
In staff properties you can set whether a staff gets hidden or not and have the choice between Auto, Always, Never and Instrument
In reply to In staff properties you can… by Jojo-Schmitz
Yes, thanks, I saw that. What I'm trying to figure out is how to apply it to just one staff in a linked grand staff, instead of both. In other words, I never want the treble staff to hide, but I want the bass staff to hide where empty.
In reply to Yes, thanks, I saw that… by abnyc
Then apply "Never" to the treble staff
In reply to Then apply "Never" to the… by Jojo-Schmitz
Ah, thank you for clearing this up. I didn't realize that the staff properties part of the menu box was unlinked for the grand staff.