Hiding staff with invisible notes

• Nov 24, 2019 - 16:46

Hi!
Any way for MS to hide staves with invisible notes, as if they were empty? Trying to avoid going the route of two staffs (notation vs playing staff).
Thanks!
Cheers,
Uri


Comments

Do you want the instrument always hidden? If so press i and remove the check from the Visible field for that instrument. If you want the instrument hidden on certain systems, hidden notes are one of the tricks to prevent hiding empty staves from hiding staves.

Would if be much of a hassle, in page settings to in Style > Score, under "Hide empty staves within systems", to add a tick box such as "consider staff with invisible notes as empty staff"..? Or something along those lines. Hope I am making myself understood...

It doesn't work this way currently. While it is conceivable this could change someday, why are you trying to avoid the correct method that already does work?

In reply to by urisala

This is the one we designed and specifically intend for people to use for this purpose. Many things about the way we handle invisible notes versus invisible notes are different, and the differences are predicated on the intended usage: invisible staves for notes you want to hear but don't wish to affect the score in any visible way, invisible notes for notes you want to hear and not see but should still have sort of effect on the score (eg, for spacing).

In reply to by urisala

"I am having a hard time coming up with a case where I want to hear notes and not see them."

How about the case where you want to hear an ornament (turn, say) play back in a particular style, but only see the symbol on the score? You can add the notes of the ornament either in an extra voice or in an extra stave and in either case make them invisible.

The converse case, seeing but not hearing notes, is useful when you have an instrument cued into another part e.g. oboe into a clarinet part. You won't want the oboe notes to be played back with a clarinet sound. This is achieved by selecting the cue notes and unticking the "play" box in the inspector.

In reply to by urisala

What opposite case? Invisible notes are notes you hear but don’t see, whether you put them in an invisible staff of make them invisible in the same staff. Staves are free, you can have an unlimited number of them. So I don’t understand the reluctance to use invisible staves? They were designed for this purpose, they work perfectly.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

With opposite case i was referring to notes you see but dont hear. But two posts above someone gave me a good example of when this might be wished.
As for the reluctance, well this is entirely subjective, what one likes and what one is used from before. With sibelius, all I had to do was hide notes, and sibelius would treat it as if it was empty. If I was to make changes to an invisible bass line, I find it a hassle to go to instruments, make visible, make the change, go back to instruments, make invisible. For every time I want to change what happens in an invisible stave.

In reply to by urisala

I most commonly use invisible notes so the staff will be visible to either match what is in the original document when I'm copying or to fill the page with something besides space though I have been know to use it to make an ornament sound correct as well.

In reply to by urisala

I normally don't bother hiding the instrument until I'm done. But if I had some special need to be hiding it while I'm still busy editing, I might try generating a "part" that consisted of just the staves I want to be see, and treat that as my "score", then use the actual score when I want access to the invisible staves. Might be ways of doing something similar by generating a part for the full score, or just the invisible staves, which they are still visible, then hiding them in the full score.

Posting an actual score would help us understand your use case better, though. I'm not clear on why you'd be having invisible notes in a staff you actually want to hide. The normal use case for invisible notes would be to write out an ornament, or in the case of something like bass lines, to provide actual playback notes while the display is showing slashes and chord symbols - but in those case, you don't want to hide the staff at all.

In reply to by urisala

You wrote:
If I was to make changes to an invisible bass line, I find it a hassle to go to instruments, make visible...etc.

I have never used Sibelius and am curious to know how one makes changes to an invisible (hidden) staff containing invisible notes without first making something visible.

Also, as others have mentioned, there exist many different use cases...
Formerly, in MuseScore, I routinely notated guitar and bass accompaniment to bluegrass banjo tunes, then made the accompaniment invisible (in Instruments) and left the banjo notes visible, but made them silent.
So, I had 2 invisible staves -- i.e., guitar + bass -- that did play along with 1 visible staff -- i.e., banjo -- that did not play while I finger-picked along, reading the visible (banjo) notes.
When the parts creation facility later came along, I modified my old routine.

As you wrote:
As for the reluctance, well this is entirely subjective, what one likes and what one is used from before.
Old habits die hard, as the saying goes. Also, MuseScore is different from Sibelius (in other ways as well).

Regards.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

So I've found a case where I would like to have a single hidden staff that does have notes in it. It's similar to the example I gave here: the two trombone parts combine into a single staff, but Trombone 1 has a glissando going into the next measure. I don't want the combined staff to show on the first line, and I don't want trombone 1 to show on the second line. But I also don't know how to draw a glissando to the next bar without using invisible notes, and invisible notes cause the staff to show.

Do you think there's any workaround I could use to have both the glissando lines and the hidden staves? Preferably a workaround that doesn't mess up the handy dynamic lines that move along with the notes of course...

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