Distance between staff lines score-wide

• Sep 2, 2010 - 09:47

I want to adjust (increase) the space between staff lines ‘score-wide’. The handbook
says to use in this case ‘style settings’. When I go to ‘style’ – ‘edit general style’ – ‘page’- and
adjust the ‘staff distance’ after OK, nothing happens.
Can somebody help me please?

Comments

• Sep 2, 2010 - 11:10

You're looking in the right place, but try adjusting the 'System distance' instead (in the same dialog box).

You might find it useful to open one of the demo scores and then experiment with various settings. (I know I did!) Until there's detailed documentation about every setting, that's probably the best way to see their effect upon the the specific elements of the score that they control.

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• Sep 2, 2010 - 20:14

Joe, I may have incorrectly assumed you wanted to increase the space between sets of score lines, i.e., between “systems.” Did you mean instead that you wish to expand the space between the individual lines of every staff (that is, to make the five lines further apart from one another)?

If that’s what you want, you could increase the setting in Layout > Page Settings for “Space” -- but doing so will re-scale most of the other elements on the page, too.

I’m not aware of any way of manipulating the space between the five lines of a staff without changing everything else. (Neither do I know of a way to change the thickness (or “weight”) of the staff lines ... not that I have any real need to do so.) If either of those is possible, perhaps someone else will offer the solution.

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• Sep 2, 2010 - 20:37

stevebob, No I only want to increase the space between every staff line and not between
the line within a staff. And I want that for the whole score, so as a (template)standard.
But doing as you advised, I did not have any success

Xavierjazz, that is what stevebob advised but to adjust one (or more)parameter(s) and see a result I did not in any way expect that makes it very foggy.

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• Sep 2, 2010 - 21:00

It sounds, then, as though Style > Edit General Style > Page is where you need to fiddle around with the settings for System, Staff and/or Accolade distances.

I recommend changing the settings manually in very small increments and testing it out with "Apply"; if you use the clickable arrows, on the other hand, the values to the left of the decimal point will change -- and you probably need more subtle control than that.

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• Sep 11, 2010 - 13:56

It seems to become a ‘never ending story’: After I did some fiddling around with
System/Staff distances in the Edit General Style, I arrived at a satisfying staff distance of around 30mm. I even made a template with the same figures in those boxes.
But out of the bleu, after finishing my first (two page)score, I discovered that the distance
was increased from 30mm to 35mm. This is far too large. So I looked in that settings again to see if there was something changed. Nothing was changed.
I checked it with my template which still has a distance of 30mm and the same figures
are in those boxes. As far as I can see both the score and the template have matching figures when checking other parameters in the Edit General Style.
Whatever I do, I cannot get the 30mm distance back. Can somebody help me please?

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• Sep 12, 2010 - 13:57

Thanks Antonio,

By, as you advised, increasing that percentage, I managed to get the old distance back.
But I have the uncomfortable feeling not to understand entirely what I am doing when fiddling
around with these figures.
Can somebody of the software people write some detailed explanation of that ‘Edit General Style’ tab?
Joe.

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• Jul 9, 2016 - 03:24

i think the answer you may be looking for is in: STYLE>GENERAL>PAGE>STAFF DISTANCE
there you can change the space between say two instruments also if it gets too spacey you can increase or decrase the overall struture to fit say a certain number of pages. you can go that by going and selecting everything so: apple a, then go into LAYOUT and then either increase or decrease stretch

hope this helps

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• Jul 9, 2016 - 18:01

I can't get any of the settings on STYLE>GENERAL>PAGE> to increase the global distance between staffs either. I'm working on a lead sheet that has two sets of chord symbols, one stacked on top of the other (and done in System Text so it doesn't transpose). I tried changing Staff Distance, Min. system distance, Grand staff distance, and even Max.system distance. The latter (go figure!) caused the staff distance to increase slightly with one adjustment, but greater adjustments didn't cause it to adjust any further.

I can of course accomplish the needful using vertical spacers on individual staffs.

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• Jul 9, 2016 - 18:06

Staff distance contrls distance between staves for different instruments *within a single system*. A lead sheet typically has only a single instrument, so no surprise that had no effect. Similarly, grand staff distance is for controlling the distance *between staves of a single instrument*. Your lead sheet presumably has only a single staff for its one instrument, so again, no surprise it had no effect.

Min and max system distance are indeed what you want. They do just what they say - min specifies the *minimum* distance, max specifies the *maximum*. So there is guaranteed to be as much space as you specify in min, and no more than what you specify in max. This allows MuseScore to "stretch" the staves vertically to make most efficient use of the page, avoiding gaps on the bottom. Thus, a score with 8 systems on one pages and 9 on the next can both fill the page - the first page will just have more space than the second.

Generally, if you want more space betwene systems, you need to increase the minimum distance. Probably you didn't increase it enough to matter, and the automatic stretch was obscuring the effect.

If you continue to have problems, please attach the specific score you are having problems with. but it's better to do so in a new thread rather than a six-year-old one :-)

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• Jul 10, 2016 - 14:39

Um. Well, what I seem to be gravitating toward is a sort of enhanced lead sheet. My first priority is to document the song's melody, chords, and lyrics. But having done that I often want to add a harmony or two (as separate instruments); and then I'll put a piano part in consisting simply of chords struck at the beginning of measures and any other place where a new chord is played (so the listener can hear the melody and harmonies over the chord progression).

So: more than a lead sheet, less than a full score.

But once there are multiple instruments in my score, wouldn't the staff spacing properties operate as for any multiple-instrument score (regardless of whether I started with a lead sheet template or something else)?

>> it's better to do so in a new thread rather than a six-year-old one :-)

It came up in a Google search, which is typically my start point for getting answers. When a thread has messages from years (and versions of Musescore) ago, I typically jump quickly to the end (after reading the first message) to see if there are recent posts; and if so, read backward from the last post in an attempt to get information that's more likely to apply to the current version of Musescore.

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• Jul 10, 2016 - 15:43

If there are multiple instruments, then the "Staff distance" will control the defualt distance between them (can be overridden on a staff-by-staff basis in Staff Properties (or shift+drag) or on a system-by-system basis using spacers.

But the distance between *systems* continues to use min/max as I described.

FWIW, using a Google search to find answers is definitely good practice. But if you need to ask additional questions, unless the threrad is recent and hence relevant, it's usually better to start a new thread. It's easier to follow discussions when we don't have to wade through pages of unrelated posts to find the new ones.

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