changing staff distance

• Apr 18, 2015 - 20:34

Hi,

Using the Jazz Template but want to make the distance between staves much smaller (move them in the vertical direction closer together). Found staff distance in handbook

https://musescore.org/en/node/35896

But when I change values (using Apply and/or OK in General->Style->Page), nothing happens to my score's display in musescore. (Is there some kind of refresh operation I need to request?)

Curious what expert users would do to accomplish what i need. I'm definitely a newbie.

For more context, its great there's a increase or decrease stretch for measures ... wish there was one in vertical direction too.

Thanks

--b


Comments

It usually helps to post the actual score you are having problems with. But note "staff distance' has no relevance for a lead sheet - a lead sheet has only a single staff. It's *system* distance you probably want to change. The *minimum* system distance determines the number of systems MuseScore can fit on a page, but then the staves are automatically stretched to the *maximum*. So you probably need to change the maximum staff distance. You may or may not also want to change the minimum.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I have tried several things to get the last system staves to get closer together. Nothing seems to work. As you will note on the last page, the piano is further from the vocals. How do I DECREASE the distance between staves in this instance...to get the piano closer to the vocals? Thanks for any help!

R Bryan Anthony (B2Sing4u)

P.S. I have attached the full score for reference.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Yea, "vertical justification" took off some of my SYSTEMS and placed it on the following page, indicating 2 SYSTEMS per page instead of the regular 3-4 SYSTEMS per page. Therefore, I disabled the vertical justification and will just have a problem with the stave distancing on the last page.

In reply to by b2sing4u

Vertical justification in itself will never change the number of systems on a page, it only affects spacing. However, there are different defaults for minimum staff distance depending on whether justification is on or off, so you might need to play with that setting to get the same results with vertical justification on versus off

In particular, default for staff distance is smaller when vertical justification is on, meaning you should normally be seeing more systems per page, not less. And that's definitely the case with your score. With justification on, you get three systems per page consistently until the end, but with it off, many pages only fit two. that's because with vertical justification on, the default for minimum staff distance is 3.5 sp, but off, it's 6.5 sp.

Anyhow, you shouldn't need to resort to spacers. If you don't like how much space is added within that last system, you can still leave vertical justification enabled but just decrease the max staff distance setting and/or the various other settings here like the factors listed on the left side of the dialog.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Well, Marc, I have adjusted justifications, off and on, but I'm still getting 2 systems on a page the later pages of the score. I have attached the file so you can see what I'm referring to. I have adjusted between max and min staff distances, grand staff, and system distances. I'm currently getting two systems (on two pages) with HUGE spacing issues. Being visually impaired, as I am, I am finding it very difficult to get this to work. Can you help?

In reply to by b2sing4u

That's because you've added staff spacers that are forcing some systems to require more space. Remove the one on measure 110 and that system moves to the previous page. Remove the rest and things space out more logically. but there is no getting around the fact that those last two pages have taller systems than the rest due to the way the dynamics, lyrics, and other symbols & notes above/below the staff interact. If you really want to force that much music onto the page, you'll need smaller staves, or bigger paper, or smaller margins. I would think you would probably be better off, though, with larger staves and accepting there being only two systems per page.

If you really want to fit three systems on these pages with your current settings, you'd need to do a bunch of manually adjustment so the markings above/below the staff don't reauire so much additional space to be added. OIr, you can go to Format / Style / Score and set "Min vertical distance" to a negative number, thus allowing symbols to collide by that much. A value of -1 does the trick, and maybe the resulting collisions won't bother you so much.

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