Hide instrument from system when measures are NOT empty

• Nov 15, 2020 - 14:50

Hi,

I use musescore 3 and wonder if it is possible to create parts where only selected measures of certain instruments are visible (or hidden). I would like to avoid having to hide each measure individually by right click and toggling visibility as this is rather time consuming.

The purpose of this is to create an ossia-like presentation with a main piano score and occasional excerpts from the violin or voice parts to help the pianist follow the music during long breaks or repetitive moments but not during the entire piece so as to not clutter the score.

Thank you for your help,
Sincerely

Comments

• Nov 15, 2020 - 15:32

If you make non empty measures invisible, the space for them will remain and you can't do anything about it. If that's ok with you, then you can use measure properties (right click a measure and choose measure properties) then remove the check for Visible in that staff. If you're not sure which staff you're on (common in symphonic scores) it will be in the status bar at the bottom left of the MuseScore window.

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• Nov 15, 2020 - 16:30

If you only want to hide some of the measures on an instrument then there is no fast way. You must make each measure invisible one at a time which is quite time consuming. It isn't intended to be used in this manner.

There is probably an easier way of doing this, like putting all of the measure in an invisible instrument (press i, add an instrument, click OK, Add all of the notes to that instrument, press i and remove the check from visible). You will then have the notes sound but the instrument invisible. You can then leave only the measures you want seen in the visible instrument and hide a couple of empty measures if you want using hide empty staves and/or the cutaway option in staff/part properties (right click the staff, choose staff/part properties).

If you explain your goal, perhaps I or someone can come up with a better idea.

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• Nov 15, 2020 - 16:51

My issue is the following: I have a rather long orchestral score (300 measures) with multiple instruments. There are rubato parts where the pianist should follow the lead singer or lead violin (depending on the parts). I am trying to create a sheet for the pianist where the lead (voice or violin) is displayed in small above of the piano part during the rubato sections of the piece (only a few measures here and there). The rest of the time, I don't want to display anything other than the piano part (even if the voice or violin is playing) as it is not necessary for the pianist to play and so as not to clutter the score.

Thank you for your suggestions :)

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• Nov 15, 2020 - 18:39

I think I would do this:

  1. Enter all notation content in the main score (editing after creating the parts is going to be painful).
  2. create additional violin and soprano parts in the score. This may throw the part names off - i.e. you will probably have them named soprano 2 and violin 3, but that can be fixed by editing their staff properties.
  3. copy the rubato sections from the main violin and soprano parts that you want to appear in the piano part and paste in the additional parts.
  4. select the whole of those two additional parts and in the inspector untick the play box.
  5. create parts including a single part that includes the piano plus the additional violin and soprano parts.
  6. Edit the instruments and untick the visible box for the additional violin parts - luckily this seems to only affect visibility in the score, not in parts that have already been created.
  7. set the violin and soprano and violin staves in the piano+violin+soprano parts to always hide when empty and tick the small stave box in stave properties.

The sequence is important and it is a bit involved. Copy/pasting to dummy parts is not ideal as it makes subsequent editing difficult. However, I think this process will give you what you want.

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• Nov 15, 2020 - 18:43

I have an idea, but I'm not sure it's complete. It sounds like you have a piece with more than 3 instruments but you want to create a part for the piano that shows the voice and violin when necessary. It's my understanding that you want the voice and violin visible only in certain parts on the piano part. So as an example, measures 1-10 may have voice and violin but you don't want those measures included on the piano part, but you do want any measures from 11-25 with voice or piano included on the piano part and measures where these don't have notes to be invisible as though the voice or violin is an ossia.

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