Un-breaking systems
On the current score I'm working on I want 4 measures per system but as I ad music sometimes the program "auto fills" systems and I end up with one system with 3 measures and then two and then 3 and so on. So I click on the format pull down menu and click on add/remove system breaks and select "break systems every ?? measures" (in this case 4) but I still have a few systems with less than 4 measures. Using the system break tool only moves measures "forward" or closer to the end which has the effect of expanding the score. I'd like to compress the score by moving measures for one system BACK to the previous system so it evens things out and I keep my 4 measures per system format. If I have systems with more than 4 measures the system break tool is effective. If I have systems with less than 4 measures how do I get the 3 or two measure system back to 4 measures?
Thanks
Comments
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/page-settings#scaling ?
Can you attach here the score you are having problems with?
In reply to https://musescore.org/en… by Shoichi
Sorry for the late reply. Scaling did the trick. I lowered the scaling unit by one "unit" (just clicking down once) and it evened out the score to 4 measures per system across the board! Thank you so much. The attached file is the score before I made the adjustment. It's also a work in progress. I'm not even close to being finished.
The tune I'm working on has "strains" that are 8 measures in length (common for this genre of jazz) therefore the 4 measures per system just makes more sense to me.
Or check if it works by decreasing the stretch of these measures: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/measure-operations#layout-stretch
Adding breaks every four bars adds breaks, thus guaranteeing you won't have more than fou bars per system, but it doesn't change your staff size or spacing settings or do anything else that would allow more measures per system than your current settings allow. In this sense it's just like a word processor, you can use line break to break a line early, but if you want more words on a line than currently fit, you'll have to reduce your font size or character spacing etc.
Generally, if you are running into this often, it probably means you are using too big a staff size for the music you are creating, and your best bet is to turn it down in Format / Page Settings. But you can also try decreasing the default spacing slightly in Format / Style / Measure. Generally this results in a more crowded appearance, so some combination of the two approaches is often best. or consider the possibility that this music just isn't well suited to fit four measures on line.