change default note size

• Feb 19, 2017 - 09:13

Hi,

For me, the default note size is 'too fat'.
It looks fine when I set small notes to 89%, and make ALL the notes "small".

But then i have no small notes anymore.......

Can I change the default note size?

Thank you. Martin


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Besides Jojo's recommendation, although this isn't for what you're asking, maybe you can achieve your desired results by decreasing the scaling in Layout → Page Settings and then increasing your default font size. Good luck.

P.S. Remember that there are two layers of smallness in the Inspector: the one that affects all of the note's properties under the "Chord" section, and another that affects just the note-head under "Note". Maybe this can be exploited for your purposes.

See also #60446: Add notehead size style setting. The sizes we use are pretty standard, coming directly from some very well-established fonts, so I wouldn't mess with changing this without *extremely* good reason (very few of us have more experience with music engraving than the designers of the Emmentaler or Bravura or Gonville fonts). But I do agree that we should eventually provide a control for that.

In reply to by fred661

I am a professional pianist, and no, I don't agree :-). As I said, the people who designed these fonts really do know what they are doing far more than I or the vast majority of other users, but feel free to try on of the other ones in Style / General to see if it suits your subjective preferences better.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

There is no doubt that those designers sure knew what they were doing. But still, some of us musescore users would love to be able to scale the default sizes of some elements a bit down for readability of the score on paper or even on tablets. E.g. it would be great to be able to have a user setting for the default size of the regular note heads. Thanks for considering this.

In reply to by fred661

To my eyes, the note sizes seem the same between your samples.
Allowing for some resolution issues with the original, what looks different are: 1) the size of the accidentals (smaller height/thicker horizontals in the original); 2) the thickness of the ledger lines (thicker in the original); 3) the thickness of the beams (thicker in the original); 4) spacing between accidentals & notes (more space in the original).
So, I don't think changing the note size will bring the improvement you're looking for. A combination of changing to a different font, and changing some spacing, may be better options.
Good luck!

In reply to by marty strasinger

What I see is that in the scanned original on the left, the note sizes are inconsistent - for instance, in the very first chord, the Db is larger than the other two notes. it looks like some misguided engraver thought to make any notes a third apart smaller than the others. You can do that in MuseScore too - just mark them "Small" (and perhaps use Format / Style / Sizes to tweak what that means). But this thread is more about changing the overall note size for all notes.

You wrote:
It looks fine when I set small notes to 89%, and make ALL the notes "small".
But then i have no small notes anymore.....
later:
I prefer the 'air' around chords....

Perhaps you wish to try this (in addition to, or in combination with, any other musical fonts)...

So, instead of making the notes smaller (and thereby losing small notes), increase the staff line distance.
See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/staff-part-properties#common-staff-…
and look for 'Line Distance'.

Line_distance.png

If you go too large, you run the risk of needing to scale things like time signatures - to occupy the added space.

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