Thoughts about layout for publishing score (print)
Hi All,
I am preparing a score for self publishing - to be made available for sale but mainly for Producers wanting to stage this award-winning musical.
It's not a large ensemble (maybe the fattest song has 4 vocal soloists, 2 vocal ensembles, 5 instruments) but if I follow the convention of hiding staves when empty (apart from first system) it is of course almost impossible (or not??) to get a layout that evenly spaces on pages. When a system is slightly larger than half a page and is followed by one at least as large then there's going to be a blank space underneath.
I just wondered how one approaches this from a "professional looking" point of view.
The score I've looked at to try and get some guidance publish with all staves - empty or not. Which of course means that it's relatively easy to decide on how many bars per stave and stick to that, then adjust the overall sizing to accommodate the number of staves, then every page is the same layout. Sweeney Todd is just 4 bars per page.
Or is there a trick I'm missing? I can't imagine at the moment being able to get an even density to each page if there are times when only two or three players per system and others with 10 or more.
I'd love some feedback! How others manage this, and what is acceptable / unacceptable in a score being present to a musical director for example, or a production company. Should empty staves rule?
Comments
https://musescore.org/en/node/286498 Maybe it's not the right thing for you but...for some ideas.
Some things to consider:
Are you offering this as a download or as an order of paper copies? Most conductor scores are bigger than letter size by close to double.
As a conductor, I don't like hidden staves. But not everyone feels that way. OTOH, after a while, the score is just for quick reference now and then.
A set number of bars per page might not work all the time. It just depends on how busy the music is.
The look of your layout is important, of course. But in the end it's the quality of the music that is more important.
In reply to Some things to consider: Are… by bobjp
Thanks for the response. I guess the published version is basically a reference version. I want the songs and the arrangements "in stone" as it were at publication date. These will be available as a US letter style Songbook printed (Lulu, Amazon etc) and also as an e-book/ PDF. This is also to send to some of our Kickstarter & other supporter fans who backed the project - a full signed score was one of the rewards.
Thanks for the info about Conductor scores. I expect I'll need to produce scores in different formats accordingly (and instrument / vocal parts of course), at least in PDF form. So it shouldn't be too difficult to create a clean looking full score without hidden staves, in a larger format but exported as PDF (or perhaps the PDF will scale up accordingly?). Certainly not hiding staves allows a fairly uniform approach to layout, but I take your point about set number of bars per page. At least the number of staves per system is constant!
It's not clear what you mean about "a layout that evenly spaces on pages". MuseScore should be spacing things quite evenly by default in the same of added space where needed to produce equal top and bottom margins and a balanced distribution of space within each page, exactly as is normally the case in published music. For a system that lives on a page itself, MuseScore should be adding space within the staves, up to a certain customizable maximum, at which point it gives up and leaves the space at the bottom - again, just a as professional editor would also do it when in that situation.
If you attach your score and describe the problem you are facing in more detail, we can understand and assist better.
In reply to It's not clear what you mean… by Marc Sabatella
I think I meant that it is impossible to get an evenly spaced page (the top and bottom margins are the same): where for example there's not enough room for the next system to fit beneath the current one on the same page. That system will go to the next page, and the systems on the page it won't fit on will get a larger space between them to ensure they line up top and bottom. Physically there's no way around this I can now see. I'll try and find the best example score and share ti.
In reply to I think I meant that it is… by [DELETED] 37205164
Indeed, math is a unrelenting master. Different number of staves per page means something is going to be uneven - either space above/below systems, or space within them. The defaults in MuseScore 3.6 are designed to produce professional results most of the time - they were put in place by a professional music engraver. But for any one particular score it could be necessary to override the defaults to produce more pleasing results.
Separate from any concern about spacing is the question about whether to hide empty staves. Full scores are more common for conductors to work from, particularly in large ensembles where it can be almost impossible to follow what is happening page to page. But condensed scores are commonly found in "study" scores published in collections.