irregular horizontal spacing between notes
Hi,
how do I make the spacing between notes in my score more regular?
The spacing works most of the time but for example in the measure I attached the triplet take up as much space as the half note, which makes the score very hard for musicians to sight read.
The problem occurs quite often so I would appreciate if there is a solution which doesn't involve using the leading/trailing space option in the inspector.
Also how do I increase/decrease stretch via shortcut on a mac with german keyboard?
Thank you very much
Benni
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Comments
Since you did such a small portion of the screen all I can do is make an educated guess. You are showing one of many (more than 1) lines of music. The spacing is caused by the other lines of music. Once the parts are extracted the spacing will be what you want. If you are not extracting parts, then any other spacing will cause confusion when trying to reconcile the parts while looking at them on one sheet of paper, such as a conductor's score. Notice the spacing in the following measures with identical notes in the first instrument.
Here is the first line extracted as a part.
![spacing 2.png]( "spacing 2.png")
Notice there are no extra spaces.
In reply to Since you did such a small by mike320
Hi,
thank you for your reply.
What happens in the exported part is exactly, what I want to avoid. I want to have regular spacing for the meter, in this case quarter notes. So that the half is two times the length of the triplet.
I also want the musicians to play from the score.
best,
Benni
In reply to Hi, thank you for your by Benni Grau
please share the score, not pictures of it. I can see nothing wrong with the spacing on that Picture BTW
In reply to please share the score, not by Jojo-Schmitz
Hey,
I will provide the score a little bit later.
What I want to achieve is a more obvious representation of the beats:
The half note is two times a quarter, so it should take up roughly 2 times the space of a quarter (which in this case is the space required for the triplet).
The way it's represented now makes it very hard to read the score on sight as the beats of 4/4 meter aren't obvious in the spacing.
So is there a way apart from manually editing leading/trailing space in each measure to change the spacing to my desired result?
In reply to Hey, I will provide the score by Benni Grau
Generally the spacing is not linear, i.e. a half note is longer than a quarter but still shorter than two quarters. Otherwise you get enormous spacing in situations where you have sixteenths and half notes involved or even thirtyseconds.
Still, your half note is a bit short (Mike's is even shorter), maybe because the triplet gets "blown up" by the rests which are interspersed. But I think your triplet is a bit of a sight-reading challenge regardless of spacing; I had to think a while before I understood how simple it actually is.
In reply to Hey, I will provide the score by Benni Grau
What you want is not standard and will do nothing to help a half competent musician to sight read. A less than half competent musician will never consistently play that rhythm correctly any way. MuseScore does not make it easy to do non standard notation, so You'll have to find some other way to make it happen, such as using the leading/trailing space option in the inspector.
In reply to What you want is not standard by mike320
OK. I'm working with skilled musicians. The piece was actually played in concert. The feedback I received from the players was that the spacing should be revised in the way I described.
So there is no way to make the spacing more linear apart from using the leading/trailing space options? Some workaround?
In reply to OK. I'm working with skilled by Benni Grau
You have to find a work around.
Perhaps put rests into voice 2 to make it line up the way you want, then make it invisible.
If they're looking at a single line of music then I don't know where they learned to read music. Before you can read music you need to be able to count. If I ran across that measure you showed me I would have stopped to double check the count myself. We used to practice sight reading music cold, so that when we got into competition and the director had 5 minutes to review it with us, we had 5 more minutes than we were used to to examine our scores and make sure nothing like that surprised us. He wasn't allowed to sing or hum rhythms to us. We had to figure it out ourselves. We practiced with difficult music. Your skilled musicians should be able to do that as well. I'm a skilled, but by no means professional musician. In professionally printed music, I've never seen a individual's part have weird spacing to help the musician read it. No spacing is going to make it any easier to count, unless you put something like up and down beat arrows on it, and a skilled musician doesn't need that.
In reply to OK. I'm working with skilled by Benni Grau
I think you may have been misunderstanding them, or else you were trying to force them read from the score rather than their individual parts. It is perfectly normal and correct in a *score* for the spacing to be a bit odd, because notes in one part will influence the spacing in another part. This is absolutely correct and should not be messed with. But musicians don't read form the score - they read form individual parts. When you generate individual parts (File / Parts), it should already be the case that the spacing for the parts is correct. If you are encountered a case where the *parts* appear to be showing incorrect spacing, please attach the actual file you are having trouble with (not just a picture of it) so we can understand better. Normally, though, you should *not* need to deviate from the default spacing, which is standard and correct by default.
In reply to I think you may have been by Marc Sabatella
The music has several "motives" which are divided onto two instruments and/or the tape. For the single parts it would be necessary to include many Ossia staffs for the phrasing to be correct.
I played with the export parts option but can't seem to find a good way to incorporate Ossia staffs without destroying the layout of the score. I found that as soon as I change the visibility for example it changes in the score too. Do you know how to do that more efficiently?
It's important for the players to be able to see all beats at first glance as the piece is over ten minutes, difficult to play and memorize
In reply to The music has several by Benni Grau
Ossia shod still be perfectly consistent with parts, depending on how you are creating and using them. Again, it's easier to help given an actual score, not just a picture (or verbal description). Although if you are copying an existing score, a picture of relevant portions of that could be useful.
In reply to The music has several by Benni Grau
Here are the measures with various hidden rests. The first is identical to the second except the hidden rests are shown in the second
(If you click an image you can look at all the measures.)
In reply to I think you may have been by Marc Sabatella
Double post
In reply to Hi, thank you for your by Benni Grau
This not some arbitrary limitation of MuseScore - it's the inevitable result of forcing musicians to play from a score rather than parts. If musicians are to play from a score, then correct note spacing *will* result in irregularities if the parts have different rhythms. Consider, what it one part has four quarters while another has eight thirty-seconds followed by three quarters. The correct spacing here would be this:
The only way to get both staves to look reasonable is to add all sorts of otherwise unnecessary space - basically pretending each beat was subdivided into thirty-seconds. That is what the approach shown in another response does. Here, it would look like this:
But this is very space-inefficient. If you literally did this for the entire score, it would take four times as many pages as it currently does, with page turns coming much more often, and you'd be getting a *different* set of complaints. Plus, this spacing is quite incorrect in itself and will also lead to reading errors, since musicians are not accustomed to seeing such linear spacing (where a half note literally takes *twice* the space of a quarter, etc). It's kind of a no-win situation, really.
Add an extra staff.
Fill it with the smallest note value that exists in that measure
They all come in line.
In reply to Add an extra staff. Fill it by Ziya Mete Demircan
Hey,
Thank you that's really neat. How do I get rid of the staff afterwards without destroying my vertical spacing between staffs?
In reply to Hey, Thank you that's really by Benni Grau
I don't know :)
Try, make invisible.
Edit > Instruments = (or shortcut I )
There is a "visibility" column.
deselect this staff's checkbox.
may be worked.
In reply to Hey, Thank you that's really by Benni Grau
And if readability is important, you should use Ziya's approach above and use staccato on eighth-notes instead of sixteenth-notes (staccato on sixteenth-notes should really only make sense in really slow tempos).