Bars to a line
Hi
I'm in Musescore 2.3. In previous versions setting 4 bars (or anything) to a line was easy. However, this feature has disappeared, or maybe moved elsewhere?
Thanks in advance - Joe
p.s. I already know about breaks and Spacers, but that's very long winded for an orchestral score and parts!
Comments
There's no such thing as a musescore 2.3, so I guess you meant 2.0.3?
The 'feature' to force x measures of equal with existed in 1.x and has indeed been removed, as it was seriouls broken.
You can still set a max. of x measures per system via https://musescore.org/en/handbook/tools#line-breaks (in 1.x this existed as a plugin, in 2.x it is fully integrated)
I think you must be misunderstand how the tool works. Maybe you are trying to add individual line breaks? That's not what we are talking about. We are talking about a single dialog box you access from Edit / Tools / Add-Remove Line Breaks that does the entire score in one action.
BTW, it essentially *never* happens in published orchestra music that each part would have consistent line breaks like this. I guess maybe if you are producing music for a children's orchestra it might make sense? If not, could you explain the special situation that makes this seem like a good fit for your particular score? If it's something that others are likely to run into, we could certainly consider adding an option to the dialog to add similar breaks to all parts. Or a tool to copy line breaks from score to parts - that would have the advantage of allowing consistency from part from part *without* forcing each line to have the same number of bars. Again, the vast majority of published music is *not* done that way, but I gather there might be some special situation that might apply to enough people to be worth figuring something out. So understanding the real world context would be important in assessing this.
In reply to I think you must be by Marc Sabatella
Great, I hadn't seen this feature. I meant in the tool bar/palette in Breaks and Spacer, so you can probably understand my comment now.
As for the situation: Yes, what you suggest could/would be very helpful. I have to write charts for jazz big bands, and in this particular instance it's a school band. I understand your original comment that it never happens in orchestral parts (you have a point), but in jazz and popular music we often write music this way, if possible.
In this case, a big band, it's very useful to not only talk about the bar numbers, but also sometimes use 'B section' or 'C', ex: "Let's take it from 'C' etc". All this is covered in Musescore, but the idea of copying line breaks would be excellent (as you suggest), it indeed makes rehearsing so much easier to say "go to bar xx, line 5".
Just a thought.
Big thanks for your help.
In reply to Great, I hadn't seen this by joesh
We write lead sheets this way, but not big band or other other ensemble arrangements. For very good reason - it would look bad and/or be very space inefficient. Consider, saxophones may have measures full of eighths while trombone have just whole notes. You don't really want to try to squeeze eight bars of onto a single line in the saxes just because the trombones can, nor do you want to limit trombones to only three bars in that passage just because that's what makes sense for the saxes. And the saxes might have whole notes elsewhere, so you don't want four measure per line for the entire part or you'll waste a lot of space thus resulting in unnecessary extra pages etc. For these reasons and others, synchronizing line breaks across parts is essentially never done in published music - neither orchestra nor jazz. Occasionally in extremely simple arranges for children but that's about it.
Lead sheets are different, but again, the improved facility in 2.0 already does a much better job of this (eg, you can account pickups, voltas, and codas however you like).
In reply to We write lead sheets this by Marc Sabatella
Hi Mark
Thanks for your comments.