Finale Forum

Finale 2014 on Mac

A part of my improvisation involves a vocalise-like section that requires three staves, but the rest of the piece requires only two staves. There is no reasonable way to consolidate that particular section to two staves only, but I don't want a third, empty staff hanging around throughout the entire piece. Is there a way to get rid of it? Would I have to write it as an ossia? (It's not an ossia, so I'd rather not...)

Thanks in advance!

You have to start with all of the required staves. As Ron says, it's easy to hide the empty staves where you don't want them, with the staff tool.

Thank you for your responses! Unfortunately, I am having trouble figuring out how to hide the empty parts of the third staff. I tried looking online, but I couldn't figure it out... (I'm quite new to Finale.) I'd really appreciate if someone would help me with that. I understand how to get the staff tool up, but I don't know where to go from there...

Nevermind, I've got it. Thanks again.

For those who might be reading this in the hopes of discovering how to do it, here it is.

In Page View, select the Staff Tool, select the entire staff in question, then from the Staff Menu select Hide Empty Staves. They will be hidden only if empty, for the elected duration (in other words, you can only hide a selection of systems if you want.)

If you want the extra staff hidden in Scroll View (which you probably do if you work in Scroll View) then you are looking at Staff Sets in the View menu (hold down the alt key to program the set, after selecting the staves you want to show.) There are more detailed instructions in the manual.

(With a scroll-view staff set, the staff will be hidden even if it contains music, of course.)

By the way, if you don't want the suffer the extra staff until you're ready to put music in it, it can be added later without disrupting anything. It will temporarily mess up page formatting on previous pages, but if you then hide it right away the formatting will go back as before.

And (forgive me for going on) if you want to hide the staff for part of a system, ossia style, apply the staff style "Force hide staff (cutaway)" to the empty portions in that system.