Swapping parts

[Davidabb]

Hey all,

Okay, I orchestrated a whole section of a piece and looking back, there are like 12 measures where I want the Clarinet to play what the Trumpet is playing and visa versa. Is there an easy way to swap these parts?

What I would normally do is copy one part onto an unused staff and paste accordingly. However, I have no empty staves.

There are certainly plenty of workarounds for this but I just didn't know if there was an easy one-click way of doing this.

Thanks!

David

[Peter S.]

a) add a new staff to your document, do the swap and delete the staff...
b) use a new document, copy some measures to it

[Peter Thomsen]

Indeed there is an easy way:


1) Select the 12 measures in the Clarinet staff.
Copy the selected region to the Clipboard (= ⌘-C).

2) Select the 12 measures in the Trumpet staff.
Hold down ⌥ (= Option, alt), and click on the first of the 12 measures in the Clarinet Staff.
The selected Trumpet region will get copied to the Clarinet staff.
This trick bypasses the Clipboard where you still have the 12 Clarinet measures.

3) While the 12 Trumpet measures are still selected, paste the Clipboard measures into the Trumpet staff (= ⌘-V).


The trick in step 2) is worth remembering, partly because it is fast, and partly because it bypasses the Clipboard, thus leaving the contents in the Clipboard intact.

[Davidabb]

Thank you both!!

Peter S--Thank you for your reply but Peter T's was exactly what I was looking for. A quicker way than all of the workarounds I was used to.

I thank you both for taking the time to help me out! Have a great weekend!


David

[rbsalyer]

I'm certainly no expert, but I'd try this….

paste the parts in the second layer…the show only the active layer and delete the parts from layer one…say you had trumpet in layer one and pasted clarinet into layer two….then with layer one selected, under document…show active layer only…then delete the trumpet notes. you could even move the notes from layer two to layer one….then you would have clarinet parts where the trumpet used to be…and the same for the clarinet part….

It's not one click, but it should work….

[TonyEastwood]

I'm swapping parts everyday and Peter Thompson's method of copying bypassing the clipboard is exactly what I want.

The only problem is I'm too stupid to make it work (on windows I know that = <Option, Alt> means <Control, Alt>.)

Is there a video anywhere of this trick in action?

[michelp]

The plug-in JW Staff Polyphony has a Staves -> Swap function that would do it in the score.

[TonyEastwood]

Great answer. Thank you so much, it will save me hours!

[bakkumd]

michelp,

When I use the JW Staff Polyhony method here, I noticed that this action is NOT undoable via the edit menu, yet there is no warning that this action can't be undone.

Do you get the same result on your end?

[michelp]

Undo functions for me. I have made the test in 26.3.1 and 27.4.1 (via the JW Tools menu) on my Mac, in the score (and as a result, in the parts).
Check your preferences and see if the Undo function is activated.
Otherwise, reapply "swap" on the same regions, and it will revert to the previous state.

[bakkumd]

I figured it out...

When I ran the Swap option, I was in the middle of editing an RBP Lua script... debugging some specific Undo code and making sure I was implementing it correctly for all script options. Sometimes, when verifying correct implementation, Undo can get scrambled (due to my incorrect coding) and just stops working. A quick restart of Finale to reset the Undo system and it now works fine. Thanks for the reply!