Orchestration Annotations Text for Piano Sketch

Your idea

I begin orchestral works by sketching on a piano staff, then orchestrating from there. During this sketch phase, I need a quick way to indicate which instruments are intended to play specific lines. Currently, I use staff text for this, but that overlaps with playback markings and clutters the score. It doesn’t affect playback, of course, but it looks messy and makes the sketch harder to read.

It would be great to have a dedicated text style—let’s call it “Orchestration Annotations”—specifically for this purpose. Something similar to those piano reduction scores on YouTube that show "Fl." or "Hn." above the melody.

The feature could work like this:

A unique formatting option (e.g., smaller font, italic, or light gray) that visually separates it from staff text, dynamics, lyrics, etc.

Automatically placed above or below the staff to avoid collisions with other markings.

This would replicate what composers historically did when sketching—writing "Vln," "Ob.," etc., directly onto the piano score. It’s purely a visual aid, but incredibly useful during the early compositional process.

To be clear, I don’t need MuseScore Studio to actually play back the instruments I’m sketching for—I’m already handling that with the full orchestral score. I just want a cleaner, dedicated way to annotate instrument roles while I’m still working at the piano.

Problem to be solved

When sketching orchestral works on a piano staff, there’s no clean way to label which instruments are intended to play which lines. Using staff text for this purpose clutters the score, conflicts with performance markings, and doesn’t visually separate instrument labels from other text elements. This makes the sketch harder to read and less useful during the orchestration process.

Prior art

I haven't seen this even attempted on Sibelius, but I haven't used that in a long time, and I have never used Dorico. SO IDK.

Additional context

No response

Checklist

• This request follows the guidelines for reporting issues
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The issue names no source files or tests. Start by locating the existing staff-text element and its placement and formatting behavior; define completion as a separate visual annotation style for instrument labels that can be placed above or below the staff without affecting playback or cluttering other markings.