Layout is using too much space, causing line breaks
I manually entered a piece into MuseScore from a print, in order to be able to automatically transpose the piece, to adapt to a singer. (The piece is the Swedish version of Walking My Baby Back Home). The system is one treble clef staff with melody, chords, and one or two lines of lyrics.
The problem I run into is that the original score (printed) has layouted four bars on one line, while my version in MuseScore only manages to cram three bars into one line. I have system breaks every four bars, so one bar ends up on its own line, before the next four commences. It is not like that for all lines, it is only some that MuseScore consider having too much content in order to be layouted on one line, I guess.
The attached test case illustrates this. It seems to be the lyrics and chord that causes the linebreak, because removal of some of any of those, it is layouted on one line. The test case has been reduced in order to as isolated as possible reproduce the problem.
Is there any setting or change to the score that I can do that would result in a more compact layout?
| Attachment | Size |
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| layout_fe.mscz | 6.03 KB |
Comments
Scaling: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/page-settings#scaling
In reply to Scaling: https://musescore… by Shoichi
That's another way, indeed. Many ways to skin a cat ;-)
Yet another would be to disable that 1st system indent.
Reduce stretch, see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/layout-and-formatting#layout-stretch and the attached
In reply to Reduce stretch, see https:/… by Jojo-Schmitz
Reducing the stretch worked as well for me on the simple test case we used now. However, when reducing stretch on the actual score, it doesn't work. The first two times the bars moves a tiny bit, the third time and onwards nothing happens. Is it not possible to reduce more stretch or what is the approach now?
Scaling/staff space seems to me to be unpreferred in this case.
In reply to Reducing the stretch worked… by fenglich
there ia a limit to what reducing stretch can do. In that case staff space is the way to go. You don't need to reduce by a 'full' step of 0.2 though (like the arrow keys do).
A 4th option is wider paper or narrower page borders.
And then there are a gazillion other settings in Format > Style that could help.
But preferred is reducing strecht and reducing the space setting, in that order, then a long time nothing, then other options
Maybe I'm missing something, but there are only four bars in the score you attached? So it's difficult to advise on what do for subsequent measures. In general, the best way to get more music on the page is with a smaller staff. The default spacing settings are already tight enough that further attempts to squeeze things tighter without also making them small will usually just make the page too dense. But you can certainly get that look if you prefer, try reducing the various settings in Format / Style / Measure, including minimum measure width, minimum note spacing, the distances before the first note and after the last note of the measure, etc.
In your particular case, though, I suspect it's lyrics that are the biggest culprit in why so much space is needed, so reducing the sie of the lyrics in Format / Style / Text Styles or the spacing between syllables and other settings in Format / Style / Lyrics might make sense.