Can I hide empty measures?

• Oct 23, 2017 - 00:44

Another Distributed Proofreaders book for Project Gutenberg. This one is about Wagner.

I'm trying to recreate the picture displayed in the book and am having trouble shortening the second staff. I've tried highlighting the last three bars and clicking Decrease Stretch, but it doesn't want to move. I've added two extra measures and tried to hide them, but don't know how to hide the staff lines. I really don't want to rewrap the music or leave the elongated stretch in place. Suggestions?

Attachment Size
score_p252_no10.jpg 36.27 KB
score_p252_no10.mscz 9.01 KB

Comments

The best way it to insert a horizontal text frame. If there are measures after the break, maybe on the next page, insert it before that measure, select the frame and insert a line or page break if needed. If this is the last measure of the piece then use append horizontal frame from the Add->Frames menu. In either case you can double click the frame and resize it to your liking.

I should have also told you how to actually hide measures if they need to exist. Right click the measure and select measure properties. In the white box at the top is a list of staves that give you the option to be visible. Remove the check from any measures you want invisible. You can move to the next measure by using the arrows at the bottom left.

In reply to by Shoichi

The instrument in the added measure is already set to Piano. Adding another instrument adds another staff line for the added instrument. Changing Piano to a different instrument doesn't change the Visible box. When I open Measure Properties, the Visible box is still grayed out. What am I missing?

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I agree, Jojo. However, both techniques are new to me. I didn't understand frames previously. And the business of adding another instrument so I can hide a measure is a novel and quirky workaround. It makes me laugh, because there's always a way, isn't there? Thanks for getting me back to basics, Jojo. :)

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Well actually it does make sense to hide a staff or staves in a system. Say for example you are writing a jazz chart. Normally you want there to 4 bars per "staff line" - but your song ends two bars short the usual 4 bar grouping. I don't want the last 2 bars to take up the same space as 4 bars - because I want it to be clear that the form is 2 bars shorter (in this case) than usual. The visual grouping of bars is very important for indicating the amount of time to improvise per section. In any case I want to hide the last 2 bars - and end the song in the middle of the last "stave line." I found out how to do it - and its not too difficult - I appended a horizontal frame. But you should just be able to hide bars. Its more intuitive.

In reply to by Canuckistani

Different people have different intuition :-). To me, having to put 32 measures in a song that is really only 30 measures long would feel unintuitive and just plain wrong. If there are only 30 measures in a song, then by gosh, there should only be 30 measures in the second. That is, the song doesn't have two more measures to make invisible, and people should be forced to add two fake measures and then make them invisible just to get the formatting to look right. They should deal with the formatting directly, since that what this is.

But FWIW, you can hide certain measures if you really must, right click a measure and go to Measure Properties. But the option is only valid for scores of multiple staves. The intent is to hide a measure on one staff only, to create the "cutaway score" look or for creating ossia. So to do things this way, you might need to add an invisible dummy staff, if this is a lead sheet of only one staff.

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