Going from SATB closed score to SAB and back with no empty bars

• Sep 3, 2017 - 13:27

I have been working on a score that is in the closed SATB format. Part of this composition requires that I move to the SAB voicing and then back again to SATB. Currently, I have tried to do this by adding an extra alto voice that is hidden most of the time. However, this results in a number of empty measures in the system where I start writing in SAB and the same thing happens when I go back to SATB. Is there a way to do this more naturally, perhaps even with line markings indicating the score is going from two lines to three and then back?

A related question is, how can I label the staves accordingly? In closed SATB format the staves are labeled (from top to bottom) S A and then T B. In SAB format I would like to relabel them S A B, but I found that changing the stave names in one part of the score changes them in all parts.

Thank you!

K Shahbazi


Comments

From your pictures it seems that there is only one of each voice in the song. I would use the SATB template and in the Style->General... dialog check Hide Empty staves. If there are empty measures on a line you don't want you can adjust the line breaks to force them on to their own lines so they are hidden. If you have multiple lines for a voice you want in certain spots, you can add additional voices (from the instruments) or even use multiple voices on a single line if it makes sense to. When you extract the parts, extract each part and include the voices you want on that part. So if you have two alto lines, you can extract the part, name it Alto and check both of the alto parts on the right. Use the hide empty staves to make the extra lines show up only where needed inserting line breaks to make it look right. You can also change the names of the parts to almost anything you want. You can, for example, make the first name Alto (or A) and the second one Alto II (or simply II or 2...)

Note: the line breaks are in the breaks and spacers pallet.

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