Decrease space used by half rest?
Is there a way to reduce the amount of space taken by a half-rest? I have several tight measures before and after a half-rest, which is taking a big chunk of the line. When I use stretch and shrink on the other notes in the measure, this seems to affect the entire measure, but the other notes actually need to be stretched apart. (I had thought stretch was note-range-oriented, but apparently it is measure-oriented.) I don't see any rest properties that would let me reduce the rest's real estate. I've reduced the minimum measure width. I don't want to change the overall scale, because the overall the format is good; it's just a single place where the rest seems the logical element to shrink. Sorry if this has an obvious answer.
Comments
You should attach your score and explain which measure you are talking about.
In reply to You should attach your score… by mike320
Sorry, you're right. Rather than attaching the score it's easy to illustrate what I'm after. The half rest is being given a great deal of space. I would imagine this could be reduced but I don't see any pertinent settings.
In reply to Sorry, you're right. Rather… by spinality
If there is no other staves in the score, then reducing the leading space for the barline and possibly the rest should decrease this space. If there are other staves in the score this space will be affected by those, like if you have a string of 8th notes on the same beat. When you create a part (using file->Parts) this space should become more reasonable.
I can only answer in generalities since there is still no score to be sure. If I saw the whole score, something else may become apparent.
In reply to If there is no other staves… by mike320
Thank you, Mike. I really was interested in generalities, i.e. the general approach to how a rest's spacing is being generated, so that I can address such issues in various situations. I do see that I can put a little negative leading space on both the rest and barline, but these yield only small movement with larger values apparently having no effect. This example was in a single staff score. I can create an example score that isolates the issue for further discussion, but you've already answered my main question: apparently, there is no particular property that controls the amount of space given to a half rest relative to other elements. Thanks.
In reply to Thank you, Mike. I really… by spinality
Really the only other thing I can think of is to put more measures on the system, but that would make the fretboard diagram display unacceptable.
In reply to Thank you, Mike. I really… by spinality
It's a fairly standard type of progression, each note value takes something like 1.5 times the space as the next lower. So, half is 1.5 more than quarter, quarter is 1.5 more than eighth etc. In theory this could be made a style setting indeed, but there really would not be much reason to every use values other than the default or a value of 2, to get true proportional spacing.
In reply to It's a fairly standard type… by Marc Sabatella
FWIW, I just happened to be looking at this code today for an unrelated reason, and I think I have found the actual line that controls this:
1.0 + 0.865617 * log(qreal(t.ticks()) / qreal(minTick.ticks())); // .6 * log(t / minTick.ticks()) / log(2);
So, not just a constant "1.5" :-)
In reply to FWIW, I just happened to be… by Marc Sabatella
That is really something! Thanks for the clarity -- at least I think it's clear.
In reply to Sorry, you're right. Rather… by spinality
It's not that the rest is taking space in itself, it's that the normal rules of notation call for consistent spacing. Your first two quarter notes take a certain amount of space because of the fret diagrams, the rule of notation require the next two beats take correspondingly more space as well. Otherwise the eye gets confused. I would not recommend breaking this rule of notation - the most likely result is people getting off by a beat, unconsciously treating the half rest as only a quarter. But for the record, you can play notation tricks like this using negative values for the "Leading space" setting in the Inspector.
In reply to It's not that the rest is… by Marc Sabatella
Thank you Marc, you're absolutely right. Once again I'm looking at a corner case and getting lost in the details. In this situation I had an exercise rather than a score to be performed, so getting the material on a single line was more important than performability. It seemed likely that I'd be able to tweak this manually, but large negative leading space was ignored in this situation. At any rate, I'm glad to understand better how this works.
In reply to Thank you Marc, you're… by spinality
(I faced a similar situation and found this thread.)
You wrote:
...getting the material on a single line was more important than performability.
If you are not concerned with MuseScore playback, but merely how the score 'looks', you can use measure properties and change the actual duration to 3/4. This will shrink the measure further and it will place a quarter rest which you can make invisible. Then use a half rest from the Symbols palette to take its place.
See image below:
![Tighter_trick.png]( "Tighter_trick.png")