NOTATIO

Out of curiosity I've just checked an MS score of my own from about 25 years ago in which Clarinet 2 doubles Alto Sax. Even in my manuscript I seem to have kept the Sax in the Clar 2 position. As far as I know, this causes no confusion to anybody; but it's probably not best standardized practice.

From the mid-1950s until 2001 all my score work was in manuscript, with the individuality and even minor eccentricities that may sometimes have implied. My early computer ‘engraving’ was dreadful as I fought the software and spent hours at a time on the telephone to my publisher complaining about it. I now get on with the software fluently, but I sometimes feel a little uncomfortable at what seems an excessive desire to standardize, to be ‘correct’ at all costs.

NeeraWM wrote: ↑22 Apr 2023, 06:51 Luckily, it is 99% of the times possible to do that.
:D

Unluckily for me, it's the remaining 1% that's the show stopper.

I tried... and failed.

It's just too annoying to try and have the piccolo appear above the flute.

I have been beaten down and will join the throng who have been tossing quotes and examples at me for the last week.

My piccolo part is now below 1st flute

Have you tried the "Manual Staff Visibility" feature?
Here's how I would do it:
1. write everything, included instrument changes, in the second flute player
2. create a piccolo player above flute 1, and paste in the needed music
3. at start of the score, right-click on piccolo staff, then Staff > Manual Staff Visibility > activate Piccolo > set to Hide
4. when piccolo appears, reset the visibility for Piccolo and hide Flute 2 (of course, you need a collaborating set of system breaks!)

David Ward wrote: ↑22 Apr 2023, 09:13 Out of curiosity I've just checked an MS score of my own from about 25 years ago in which Clarinet 2 doubles Alto Sax. Even in my manuscript I seem to have kept the Sax in the Clar 2 position. As far as I know, this causes no confusion to anybody; but it's probably not best standardized practice.

I think it's worthwhile to present another viewpoint on this. I work primarily in the commercial and recording worlds dealing with pit orchestras, film & TV recordings, record dates, and the like. We have a number of "stunt people" in the woodwind sections who double on a breathtaking number of instruments. I've seen some people play as many as seven different instruments on the same job.

We tend to think of the woodwind players as "Woodwind 1, Woodwind 2", etc. Many of us like to keep the order of staves constant by player (WW1, WW2...) when players change instruments. Otherwise, it becomes difficult to keep track of who has which instruments available when writing. Changing the order of staves to follow standard instrument order also makes it impossible for the conductor to know who is playing which instrument at any given moment. It also makes things difficult for the copyists when the staves are jumping all over, especially when more than one player plays the same instrument.

I've had situations as a supervising copyist where I've had to make a judgement call and decide to whom to assign a particular instrument, because it was impossible to tell from the score what the orchestrator intended. Sometimes an orchestrator or arranger doesn't care who plays an instrument, but other times they could be writing to the particular strengths of musicians whose skills they know. Keeping staves consistently in order by player throughout a score makes the intent crystal clear to everyone, even if it violates the standard score order by instrument.