Single-System Occurence of a Staff
I've searched the forums for a similiar problem, and have found none, so here I go.
I'm currently in the process of creating a complete typeset score of Holst's "Planets" and, while working on Venus I've encountered a section where there is an introduced solo cello staff. This staff exists only for a single system at a time. See attachment 1
The only solution thus far is to create another instrument and do the very clunky process of hiding every empty staff, placing invisble notes on the empty staves you wish to keep, and only put notes on these individual systems with the Cello Solo staff. Otherwise, I can condense the two staves for cello into a single staff, which gets a bit ugly. This is my current solution. See attachment 2
It would be nice to extend an instrument with an extra staff for specific systems without having to do complex workarounds. Any easier solutions would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
From Stave Properties, choose "never hide" for the staves you don't want to hide. Still not a one-click solution but better than adding invisible notes.
In reply to From Stave Properties, choose by underquark
Thank you much. Never hide doesn't fit my exact needs, but the option for "don't hide if system is empty" would seem to work well enough for my needs, but I'm the nightly in using it seems completely ineffective. I hope that one works in the first stable Musescore 2 release. It still operates as a complicated workaround, but it's better than invisible notes.
In reply to Thank you much. Never hide by MarshallTRogers
You're talking about the exact same thing I first mentioned at http://musescore.org/en/node/43826#comment-219671. There is a bug with it, though: #49341: Two staves, one hidden—barline shown at beginning of each line.
In reply to Thank you much. Never hide by MarshallTRogers
Not sure why you consider this "complicaed" or a "workaround". It's a simple and very effective way to get the job done, far simpler than having to separately and in advance decide which systems are going to need the extra staff and manually add the extra staff to those systems before adding notes - and then having to revist that decision every time the layout changes or you decide you need the extra staff on other systems. It's less work to have the staff there all the time to use as you see fit, and when the piece is completely done, turn on hide empty staves and it's instantly the way you want, in one step. That's why virtually all notation software I've ever used does it this same way.
As for the "don't hide if system is empty" option being "completely ineffective", I don't known what you mean. It works flawlessly for me. if you are some some specific problem with some specific score, please post that score and precise step by step instructions to reproduce the problem you are seeing. Otherwise, if there is indeed a bug that affects your specific score, there would be no way for us to know about or fix it.
I suspect, though, that you are simply misunderstanding the purpsoe of the option. It really has nothing to do with creating optional staves like you seem to be describing. It is simply so that if you have a passage of music where *all* instruments have nothing but rests, MuseScore has *something* to display and doesn't just show an empty space on your score. Using this option allows you tell MuseScore which stave(s) should display if literally *all* staves in the system are empty.