Text in parts
I'm finding that when I make parts from a score, very often the staff, system, and tempo texts, which look fine in the original score, get misaligned in certain ways. Here is an example:
All the obviously misaligned text in this part looks fine in the original score. Though not in this example, another thing that happens sometimes is that text which looks right in the original score if it's at the end of a staff in the part runs over to the following page.
I'm not sure how to correct this except laboriously to go into each part and correct things with the Inspector.
I searched the forum and found a lot of discussion of parts, but not this particular problem, though I may well have missed it.
Can anyone point me to some discussion on this? Or make suggestions of how I can keep it from happining? Thanks.
Comments
I don't remember a discussion on this issue, but keep in mind that changes using the inspector almost never get passed from the score to the parts.
What I do is examine the parts to see what a reasonable spacing should be if different than the existing spacing. I then use the Styles->General... and adjust these and apply to all parts. If I later run into a part where one of these changes does not make sense I change it and apply it only to that part.
When a text runs off the side of the page, I put a system break (looks like a carriage return) in the measure before so the text will stay above the staff. This may mean I need to adjust system breaks in systems above it to avoid having only one or two measures stretched across the last system.
I then adjust locations of text, hairpins and so forth to prevent items from colliding. If one system is to close to another I use a spacer to make those lines farther apart.
It is a bit tedious in version 2, but when version 3 eventually comes out you should not need to reposition everything to avoid collisions. You may still need to adjust system spacing to be able to put some items in more reasonable places.
In reply to I don't remember a… by mike320
Thanks for the comment. I'm surprised that parts works as poorly as it does -- obviously what the user wants to happen is just to generate parts and have them look right -- that is, like they look in the original score in regard to text placement, etc. I hope the next version gets closer to this.
In reply to Thanks for the comment. I'm… by jcorelis
The problem with passing changes back and forth between the score and parts is that it likely will not make sense to move a text the same way in both the score and the parts. As one obvious example, consider that you have 6 instruments and the 3rd instrument is the trumpet. In the score there is a Tempo mark that displays only on the first staff. At the same point in the music the trumpet has text that says "Mutes on" (or however you want to phrase it) and the trumpet starts with an A above the staff. You will always need to move "Mutes on" to avoid the text covering the note, so You decide to move it up. You extract parts, and now (if changes in the score are passed to the parts) you see that the text you moved up is now covering the Tempo mark that was passed from the score to the part. You now have to decide what to do about this new collision, and it probably won't look right in the score. It would be far worse if you had to go back and forth between the part and score to adjust them so they both look good.
This is the reason that you can independently move items in the score and parts so they do not affect one another.
In reply to Thanks for the comment. I'm… by jcorelis
Well, I tried the above, if I understand it, and it doesn't work.
I open the score, go to Style/General/Page, increase the Staff Distance, hit Apply, and it works fine, the space between staves is increased. I then reopen the score, hit Parts/New All, go to one of the parts, go to Style/General/Page, increase the Staff Distance, hit Apply, and nothing happens at all. Same if I hit Apply to All Parts. What am I doing wrong?
In reply to Well, I tried the above, if… by jcorelis
I tried as an experiment creating a flute part by using Edit Instruments to delete all instruments but the flute, and got an almost correct flute part, though there were still one or two texts displaced.
In reply to Well, I tried the above, if… by jcorelis
The problem is that you changed the staff distance, not the system distance. When you are in a part, each staff is it's own system (unless you put two or more instruments in the part). You need to adjust the system distance. There is a picture in the handbook a little below here that shows what all of the general page settings affect.
Edit: I just took a closer look and the picture does not make it clear that each staff in a part is its own system.
In reply to The problem is that you… by mike320
Thanks, I will try it.
In reply to Thanks for the comment. I'm… by jcorelis
Parts and score use the exact same algorithm for placing elements, so in principle, parts shouldn't look worse than the score does by default. But parts often end up being more "dense" in terms of measures per system, because in the score, the width of a measure is determined by the staff that has the most notes, so other staves are artificially spread out. In the parts, these measure will then be narrower, which does indeed often lead to more collisions.
But aside from that, you should find the parts do look just like the original in regard to text placement etc. And that is precisely the problem. In the score, it might work fine to have a text element above one measure and another text element above the next measure, because the measures are wide enough that no overlap occurs. In the parts, those measures might be narrower, leading text with the exact same placement to overlap.
So the problem isn't that parts don't follow the same rules as the score - the problem is that they do follow the same rules, but the playing field is different.
MuseScore 3 addresses this where possible by detecting collisions and moving one or both elements to avoid them.