Change an instrument midstaff and keep that name on subsequent lines

• Oct 11, 2018 - 09:58

I have a line of percussion in my score that I want to change from a snare to a bassdrum mid-line towards the end. This instrument change is retained to the end of the piece. However, when I use the "Change instrument" text, it will put the indicator that I want to change the instrument mid-staff, but will still say "Snare Dr." on the next line after despite the fact that I want it to stay as the bass drum until the end of the piece. Editing the instrument text next to the line affects all the lines, which I don't want - I just want the lines after I indicate the instrument change to say "Bass Drum" rather than "Snare Drum".

All the help I've looked up so far has shown me how to change the instrument I'm going with the line overall, and the mid-text one seems to only apply to the text above the line, but won't affect any following instrument lines. I've put a screenshot below with the specific line I was hoping to change. I used the instrument text for the Bass Drum line, and the part I circled in red is where I want it to say "Bass Drum". I can't seem to change that text unless I want to change all the other lines to "Bass Drum", which I don't want.


Comments

In such a situation you're probably better off not using the "change instrument" option, but adding both instruments for the full length of the score, then enabling "hide empty staves".

Another valid option is to simply name the staff "percussion" and then have as many instrument changes as you like. That's a common way to handle this type of thing.

In a symphonic piece, it is common to put the two on a 5 line staff and have the snare drum on what looks like the treble C space and the bass drum on the A space with the name of the instrument

Snare Drum
Bass Drum

which can be done in staff properties.

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