Bar length
How do I fix the length of a bar so it stops shrinking/expanding according to how many notes there are in the bar?
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How do I fix the length of a bar so it stops shrinking/expanding according to how many notes there are in the bar?
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Comments
Simple: you don't
There used to be such an option in MuseScore 1, it caused more trouble than worth it, so got removed.
In reply to Simple: you don't by Jojo-Schmitz
Surely there must be a way of fixing the length?
Otherwise each bar is a different length..... it looks ridiculous..... a normal piece of sheet music has equal length across all bars....
In reply to Surely there must be a way… by mswinegarten1
No, a normal piece has measures where their length follow their content.
You can manually tweak the lengh by appliying more or lest stretch to them, using the { and } shortcuts or their measure proerties
In reply to Surely there must be a way… by mswinegarten1
Bars that expand and contract depending on content is the way music has been traditionally notated.
Check this out:
![Same Length.png]( "Same Length.png")
Here is the same music as above:
![Different length.png]( "Different length.png")
To be clear: the length in terms of number of beats is of course normally fixed, and it is in MuseScore as well unless you deliberately turn on "insert" mode to allow more beats than the time signature says.
But, all measures literally the same width on the page regardless of how many notes it takes to fill those beats - that's exceedingly rare. I've seen it in some old illegal hand-written fakebooks, and one or two publishers who attempted to copy that style, but the vast majority of printed music and the normal rules of music notation call for proportional spacing.
See #308156: Add option to make the measures of a system of equal width
In reply to See #308156: Add option to… by Jojo-Schmitz
and #313555: Fixed Measure Widths
Please attach a copy of a score that you don't liike the look of. Is it a normal score or is it for teaching purposes? A normal score has bars the same length for each instrument in a score but different lengths from bar to bar.