Showing staves only where needed
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By default, a score will show all measures of all staves on all pages throughout the score, whether they are empty or not. However, you may wish to have certain staves appear only on systems where they are needed. You may even wish to have a staff appear or disappear mid-system. MuseScore Studio provides a number of controls for this purpose.
To hide a certain instrument or staff entirely throughout a score, use the Instruments panel: see Hiding instruments and staves.
A staff is considered 'empty' if there are no notes or other markings (with a small few exceptions) on it for an entire system. It is a common practice in many printed ensemble and orchestral scores to hide these empty staves in order to save space:
To hide or unhide all empty staves in the current score automatically:
Ensure that nothing in your score is selected (press Esc if necessary)
Go to the Properties panel
Under Score appearance, click the eye icon next to Empty staves.
This same toggle is available in Format -> Style -> Score as Hide empty staves within systems:
It is common, though not universal, to show all staves on the first system of a score even if they are hidden on subsequent ones (in this way, the first page will always show the complete instrumentation). If you wish to hide empty staves even on the first system, untick the Don't hide empty staves in first system toggle.
If Show brackets when spanning a single staff is unchecked, brackets and braces will be hidden when all but one the staves of a bracketed group are hidden on a system. Check this box if you want these brackets to remain visible.
The setting just described (Empty staves) applies to all staves in a score, but you can override this setting for specific staves:
Right-click the staff
Select Staff/Part properties
In the dialog that opens, select an option from the Hide when empty dropdown:
Auto: follow the score-wide setting (this is the default option)
Always: the staff will always be hidden when empty (even if the score-wide setting is not turned on)
Never: the staff will never be hidden when empty (even if the score-wide setting is turned on)
Instrument: the staff will only be hidden if all staves of the instrument are empty.
The Always setting can be useful for temporary staves, for example a cue staff which appears for a few bars or a third stave for a keyboard part required for a specific passage. See also Ossia, below.
The Instrument option is useful where you have an instrument with multiple staves, such as a piano or harp, but you wish for all of its staves to be shown even if some of them are empty, for example if only the right hand is playing on a given system. In such a case, you probably want to select this option for all staves of the instrument. The instrument will still be hidden if all of its staves are empty.
Where all staves of a system are empty, and stave hiding is turned on, the topmost staff will be shown by default. If you wish to choose another staff (or staves) to show in this situation:
Right-click the staff
Select Staff/Part properties
Check the Do not hide if system is empty box in the dialog.
Note that this setting works independently of all the other settings described here, and only applies when the entire system is empty.
There is a style used in some contemporary scores where individual measures are hidden when they are empty. These are sometimes called cutaway staves.
To use this style for a specific stave:
Right-click the staff
Select Staff/Part properties
Check the Cutaway box in the dialog.
Note that this hides the staff on a per-measure basis. Even if all measures on the system are empty, vertical space is still reserved for the staff, unless staff hiding is turned on, and the instrument label and brackets may still be shown. To prevent this from happening, it is a good idea to also set Hide when empty to Always for cutaway staves.
If you wish to use cutaway style for all staves in the score, you need to set it for each staff individually, but this process can be sped up by using the arrow buttons in the Staff/Part properties dialog:
Right-click the topmost staff in the score
Select Staff/part properties
Check the Cutaway box in the dialog
Press the Apply button
Press the ↓ button (at the bottom left) to move to the next staff
Repeat steps 3–5 until you have gone through all staves.
MuseScore also allows you to make individual measures invisible on any given staff, whether empty or not.
To set a measure to be invisible on a given staff:
Right-click the measure
Select Measure properties
In the dialog that appears, uncheck the Visible box for the staff or staves in which you wish the measure to be made invisible.
Note that you cannot make a measure invisible on all staves – it must remain visible on at least one.
An ossia is where a passage is notated on a small staff above or below the main staff to show an alternative (a different editorial reading, a realization of ornaments, a facilitation, etc.)
These can be created in MuseScore Studio using a combination of the features described above:
Add a staff as described in Adding a staff to an existing instrument; you may need to move it to the correct position relative to the main stave, and adjust any brackets that are automatically created
Enter the desired notation on the new staff
Right-click the staff
Select Staff/Part properties
Check the Cutaway and Small staff boxes
Set Hide when empty to Always
Press OK.
If you wish to hear the ossia play back instead of the normal staff, select the corresponding measures on the normal staff and uncheck the Play box in the Properties panel. If you would rather hear the normal staff, do this for the ossia staff instead.
You might also want to hide the initial or final barline for the passage. To do this, select the barline and press V or uncheck the Visible box in the Properties panel.
You may also wish to decrease or fix the distance between the ossia and the normal staff. To do this, use a Staff spacer fixed down from the Layout palette.
