Brace as a sub-bracket

Hello all.

I have two percussionists in an orchestral score, one of whom periodically plays 5-octave marimba (two staves).

I’m trying to work out if I can bracket the two players together, but keep a brace on the two stave marimba. I seem to be able to do one or the other (or in one instance, both, but superimposed over one another!)

The attached image shows the three states I am able to produce along with the style of bracketing I would like to implement.

Am I missing something?

It looks like you’re directly adding a brace, which is the “same level” as a bracket, whereas what you need is a sub-bracket. Sub-brackets appear as brackets by default, but you can switch them to appear as a brace (but at the same higher-level to the main bracket). This is now a layout option in 3.1, so is in Setup > Layout Options > Brackets and Braces > Secondary bracket appearance. This option would apply to all sub-brackets in the layout.

2 Likes

Thanks Lillie.

So there’s currently no way to have both a brace-style sub-bracket and standard square sub-brackets in the same layout?

That’s correct.

For what it’s worth, I vote for being able to have a brace-style sub bracket and a square sub bracket in the same layout, my choice.

I’d also like to see being able to have orchestral groups defined by either style main bracket, again my choice, again in the same layout. (And while we’re wishing, I’d like to see the Horn section treated as an independent group of its own, not part of Brass. I know, I can do that using Groups, but it would be cool if it could just be set up that way without doing so.)

I ran into this same issue with the front ensemble of a marching band score. I need brace sub-brackets for the two marimba players. However, I still need square subbrackets for the clarinets above in the wind line. I could be missing something, but I do not know how I can accomplish this. I agree with L3B; it would be great if braces could somehow be independent of brackets all together and we could just add them to any kind of bracket combination as needed.