A few questions

• Sep 4, 2012 - 14:03

New user, have been using Sibelius but need to find new app.
1. It seems as if the staves are permanently affixed in position. If I have a piece with fewer staves, is it possible to move them closer together? Or to move some staves while maintaining the position of others, as in to visually separate the main body of a piece from the coda?

2. The music print size is VERY small, I'm wanting to increase it . I don't want it to run on to other pages though. Is there a way to enlarge the stave and note size?

3. Is there only one music notation font? I'm able to change the language font, but seems the notation appearance remains the same.

4. I don't see a symbol for 2 measure repeats. I see the one for repeating a single measure . . . where is the one for repeating TWO measures . . . ? Very common in pop/jazz scoring, I hope I'm just not seeing it.....

Thanks!


Comments

ad 1. You can add spacers to increase the distance between 2 specific staves, see http://musescore.org/en/handbook/break-or-spacer, but see also below
ad 2. Huh? The default size is too large in my opinion. But it can get changed, see http://musescore.org/en/handbook/layout-and-formatting, esp. LayoutPage Settings → Scaling
ad 3 I'm not sure I understand the question.
ad 4. There is an RFE outstanding for a two-measure-repeat. See #10220: Add a two and four measure (multi-measure) repeat sign with playback

1. You don't move staves by dragging them, but yes,you can control the distance between staves. See the Handbook entry on Layout and formatting , amd also Break or spacer .

2. The default print size for most emplatesiskind ofthe industry standard, but a fewtemplatesdo usesmallertype to fit more music per page (the larger ensembles do this out of necessity, the old non-jazz lead sheet and solo piano templates do as well but I don't know why). This is also a setting you can control, documented on that same Hanbook page.

3. Yes, there is currently one notatipn font. Version 2.0 adds another, but nothing thatlooks handwritten, if that's what you'redriving at.

4. There is currently not a two measure repeat sign, but there are already requess to add it, so hopefully someday we'll see it. Meanwhile, you can fKe it by using two individual onebar repeat signs and dragging them together.

Since it seems you are likely doing pop/jazz charts, you might want to check out my tutorial

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it. Unfortunately, I had played around with all of those settings yesterday & was not able to get the results I. This particular chart has only 9 staves on the page, however the lines are printing significantly smaller than even some standard 10 stave copy paper that I have. Way too small to read on stage. When I increase the stave size, it moves one of them off to a 2nd page. I need to be able to get the staves BIGGER , with more of them per page. Bigger staves, closer together....

Am I missing something? Thanks again!

In reply to by NeiltheKVeg

I think what you are looking for is in menu "Style / Edit General Style / Page":

Staff Distance, to change the distance between staves of a system
System Distance to change the distance between systems.

M.

In reply to by NeiltheKVeg

Attaching a copy of the score for us to look at might help.

There is usually a way to get MuseScore to produce the output you require, but it is not always obvious by any means.

What you are describing suggest you may have inadvertently chosen some wrong page layout settings, so let us help you to put them right by attaching the score.

HTH
Michael

In reply to by ChurchOrganist

Thanks I appreciate it... no matter what I do it's not working . . . Changing the distance between staves/systems, either they're too far apart, or have virtually no space between them, incremental distances do nothing. And I am unable to get the staffs themselves to be bigger so that the notes can be bigger. I changed the name of the piece (it's a trumpet part) to protect the innocent. Thanks for looking.

Attachment Size
Layout issues.mscz 4.77 KB

In reply to by NeiltheKVeg

Did you read the Handbook articles I cited? Pay particular attention to the description of the Page Fill Threshold - that is why you are having trouble controlling the distance between systems. It's worded a bit sketchily, so let me try to explain it more clearly. The Page Fill Threshold is a percentage, and if your page exceeds that percentage, then it is automatically stretched out to fill the page. So if you want to see the actual effect of your system distance settings, start by setting Page Fill Threshold to 100%, so the page is never artificially stretched out. Then, when you have the spacing about the way you want, you can reduce the Page Fill Threshold again to clean up the margins.

The staff size you have in the score you uploaded, though, is actually only barely shy of the industry standard staff size (measure some published charts to compare if you like). If you prefer unusually large print, that's OK - simply change the setting we already described: Layout->Page Settings->Space. But surely this isn't what you meant when you called it way too small to read on stage. So I'm guessing you already upped the size before posting? If it was smaller than that originally, then I am guessing maybe this is a part generated from a score, and that you (or the template you started from) had reduced staff size in order to fit all your instruments on a page. And then when you extracted parts, this smaller staff size was kept. If your score uses small staves, you need to increase the size in the parts. What I usually do is make a copy of the score and change the staff size (and paper orientation) *before* generating parts. 2.0 will have a facility to allow parts to automatically have different formatting than the score, although currently this doesn't apply to staff size.

What I would have done with your score is up the staff size from a Space setting of 1.753 (where you had it; industry standard is 1.764) to 2mm (slightly larger than standard; I like this for jazz charts, which are often sight-read). Simply doing that and nothing else fits nine staves per page, and your music would fit. Then it would just be a matter of adding some manual line breaks (click bar line, hit Enter) to fine tune where they occur.

Your system distance is set very low, but you aren't seeing it because the Page Fill Trheshold is kicking in. Set Page Fill Threshold to 100% and you'll see just how tiny you've actually set the system distance. The Page Fill is bailing you out in this case. If your part were longer, though, it would have tried to fit too many systems on the page (11). You'd be better off using a more reasonable system distance. Then, reduce the threshold again to clean up the bottom margins.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Yes, I had read the handbook articles, but nothing I did made any difference. Clearly I was missing something, so I will try to work with what you've given me, I really appreciate all the attention.

I want to save this file as a template, but . . Do you know where the Templates folder would be on Mac OS 10.8? The handbook says to look for it at
/Applications/MuseScore.app/Contents/Resources/templates

But there's nothing in the applications folder that looks like that, only the app itself. I can't even find the templates via a search for the file names, or in places where such items might expect to be found . . .

In reply to by NeiltheKVeg

It's all about Page Fill Threshold. That's why your distance changes had no effect. Hopefully my explanation helps. It's pretty simple once you get it.

But Layout->Page Settings->Space always works as advertised - you should have had no difficulties changing staff size. Bigger values for space means bigger staves, every time, no exceptions. The "space" value is *literally* the size of the space between staff lines.

As for templates on Mac, I'm no Mac guy, but I vaguely recall that it has some thing where you can't find things like that in the file system directly - you have open the application package or something like that, then find a pseudo-folder structure in there.

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