Finale

Tips 'n' Trix

Tip:
Hiding unused staves during the introduction of a choral piece.

The issue:
In many choral pieces, the voices do not come in until after the keyboard introduction. Standard notational practice is to suppress the display of empty staves until the voices enter.
How to do it: Make sure you are in Page View, and that the page you wish to apply this to is showing. Select the Page Layout tool. Go to the Page Layout menu and select "Optimize Staff Systems".

In general, you can just accept the defaults in the next dialog. However, note that the default is to apply this action to the whole document. If you wish to apply it only to the intro, specify the system number; in this case, just the first system. Click OK.

Note that this is also the dialog to use to remove staff system optimization you may have previously applied.

The empty choral staves during the keyboard intro are now removed, but they are present once the voices enter.

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