Messed up Eighth Note Spacing

• May 2, 2018 - 03:03

I am transcribing some parts for my section in my school band to make them easier to read, but for some reason when I lower the pitch of my off-beat eighth notes below a B the notes are spaced unevenly.

The spacing issue is at section D of the first file. Second file with higher notes provided for reference.


Comments

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In reply to by Antoine Devictor

The spacing looks very irregular. The rest seems closer to the start of the measure in the 5/4 section than in measures with other time signatures. Try changing the 1/4 note in measure 46 to two 1/8 rests and notice the difference in distance compared to those in the previous measures that are in 5/4. I thought that perhaps changing the beaming might make a difference by the beaming starting in measure 34 is different than the beaming that starts in measure 43 with the same results. I looks like you found a bug in the display. The distances are supposed to be the same.

In reply to by Shoichi

@Shoichi, I think you understood fine. The spacing for the 5/4 measures is just wrong. Besides the space before the first rest in each of those measures, the spacing between the notes and rests is not consistent. As a test I tried to make the flags on the 8th notes invisible to see what the spacing looked like and it is still wrong.

In reply to by Antoine Devictor

I'm afraid I'm not understanding the problem. Which specific measure in which specific file are you thinking is not right? I do see a bunch of manual adjustments made to the spacing which does indeed mess up the correct spacing you otherwise would have gotten by default. For instance, in bar 43 of the non-Alt version, there are leading space adjustments made in the Inspector, and that is why the spacing is off, but remove those and all is well.

I suspect in the Alt version you getting confused by the flags, which are making the spacing - which is quite regular - look less regular than it actually is. This is but an optical illusion, however. It is true that some engravers choose to deliberately create irregular spacing to correct the illusion, and MuseScore does not. If you wish to do that yourself, you can indeed use the leading space adjustments. But be careful, because this can produce bad effect in other staves that might not have the same illusion going on.

mike320... You wrote:
Try changing the 1/4 note in measure 46 to two 1/8 rests...
OK, but for which score?

I see two scores attached (twice) by the OP.
I open "Third_Suite_Movement_I_Alt.mscz 25.42 KB" and see measures 34 - 36 and measures 38 - 40 containing notes with stems up.
I open "Third_Suite_Movement_I.mscz" and see notes with stems down for the same measures.

The difference between the two, as I see it, is the spacing of the notes when (as stated by the OP): I lower the pitch of my off-beat eighth notes below a B...
Lowering the pitch below B causes stems to go up, requiring more room between the flag and the following eighth rest:

spacing1.png
Result... the measures get spread out more (or less).

Regards.

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Everything I observed was in the Alt version. I used this one because there were no adjustments to the locations of notes or stretch (at least in the measures I mentioned).

What appears off is the spacing before the 8th rests. If you put your ruler to the space between a rest and the next note you will see the distance is greater. If you look at the distance between a barline and the first beat in a measure you will see that the distance is shorter in all of the 5/4 measures. If the space between all of the noteheads and rests were the same it would not look odd when the notes are stem up. As I previously stated, I made the flags invisible to assure I wasn't seeing things.

In reply to by mike320

As I said, this is an optical illusion. if you look at spacing between the end of one symbol and the start of another, it indeed looks irregular. But check spacing between starts of each symbol and you'll see it's actually quite regular. As it normally should be, otherwise it would throw off spacing on other staves. See for instance what happens if I add another staff and fill it with eighths:

spacing-illusion.png

You can see the eighths on the bottom staff are perfectly even, and that each symbol on the top staff is correctly aligned with the corresponding symbol on the bottom. Only the difference in the relative widths of the symbols on the top staff creates the illusion the spacing is anything but even. And as I said, it is true that some engravers will adjust things to correct the illusion if they know they can get away with it (eg, it won't mess up spacing in or alignment with other staves).

In reply to by mike320

mike320... You wrote:
Try changing the 1/4 note in measure 46 to two 1/8 rests and notice the difference in distance compared to those in the previous measures that are in 5/4.
OK... the 1/4 note in measure 46 is changed into two 1/8 rests. So....now what?
Third_Suite_Movement_I_Alt_spacing.png

Is it "This?" in the image above?

Additionally, you mention something about different time signatures and spacing.
Is that something else?

Regards

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