How do I group Instruments?

• Oct 29, 2016 - 18:03

Hello,

I'd like to group Instruments, so that they share barlines. I know how to extend the bracket, but that's not what I'm looking for.

I want an orchestral piece to have all the winds, brass & strings in their own staff groups, with shared barlines.

For example, if i work out of the orchestral sheet preset and want to add a trombone to the instruments, it appears as a single instrument, that i can then move around within the Instruments menu.

I hope you understand what I'm looking for. I've searched the internet for days now and tried everything that came to my mind.

Thanks for your help!


Comments

In reply to by Jamalot

The barline spans for each choir in your score need to be set up using the inspector when you create the score, as previously explained. If you plan to use that particular instrumentation and score layout often, set it up the way you want it, defining any and all special text styles, instrumental choir groupings, barline spanning, staff and system spacing, etc., etc., but without inputting any actual notes or specific text (for text elements, use generic words such as Title, Subtitle, etc.). Then save this blank score to your directory and give it a name such as 'Orchestral Template A' or whatever is appropriate for your needs.*

When you want to create a new work on that template, do not use the 'New Score Wizard' to create a new score; open the template file instead, and edit in the appropriate text for title, subtitle, etc. Then save this modified file under a new name ('Symphony No. 2' or whatever). The template file will stay in your directory unmodified, ready to be used for another piece of the same requirements, and you can then work on the new piece in the usual manner.

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*--Note: If you already have a completed score with all the styles defined as you want them, you can simply save that file under a new name as your template, then delete all the music and replace the text with generic words before resaving it under the template name. That is faster and easier than re-creating the whole template from scratch.

Whey, thanks for that idea with making it a template. What I ended up figuring out was that i could save the score as uncompressed .mscx

That allows me to open the score in a text editor in which i can edit the xml. in there is a line

<bracket type="0" span="4"/>
<barLineSpan>4</barLineSpan>

With giving span & barLineSpan the value i want, i can make that the scores default for that staff group. in addition to that i can then actually save it in the template folder and then use that for new projects that i want that instrumentation.
You'll find those lines for all the groupings.

Thanks for giving me that template idea. ;)

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