New to Musescore, How to set number of measures like Finale?
I'm totally baffled on how to set number of measures in Musescore.
Attached files shows some transcribed licks of jazz flutist Harold McNair.
I just want each lick to start at the beginning of the score
I've tried append, insert, delete, add remove system breaks and nothing seems to work.
Looked thru online handbook and book/tutorials by Sabatella and can't find a solution.
I am just jumping in and going, perhaps I missed a how to section?
Previously used a very basic version Finale and it was super easy to specify number of measures per line.
I'd hate to have to pony up for a version of Finale, since my useage is pretty simple, just transcribing and writing out Jazz lines, solos, etc Really like Musescore, hope theres a solution.
Thanks to any and everybody who can put me on the path to a solution
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| McNair.mscz | 19.54 KB |
Comments
See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/layout-and-formatting#system-breaks
FWIW, in my online course, this is discussed in the lessons on Page Layout, that would be the place to start for further help with this. But I did already respond to your comment there with more information. To reiterate that info here: just like in a word processor, you add breaks if you want fewer measures on a line than would theoretically fit, and you reduce font size or spacing if you want more measures on a line than would normally fit.
My recommendation is normally to fit choose a font size / spacing that gives you at least as many measures per line as you want, then add the line breaks where you want. In your case, you have a pretty large staff size set - 1.850mm for the staff space in Format / Page Settings is better suited to simple lead sheets than complex transcriptions. So I'd knock that back down a little, say to 1.750, so you don't constantly struggle trying to fit four measures of sixteenth on a single system - a virtual impossibility at large staff sizes no matter what program you use. Then I'd also make the default spacing tighter - the default is designed to produce "normal" spacing by default, but you're going to need unusually tight spacing to fit that music music on a single line. So you might as well do yourself a favor and knock down the default for Spacing in Format / Style / Measure, say, from 1.2 to 1.1. You could then save this score to your Templates folder - call it "Transcription", say - and select it instead of the lead sheet template when creating new scores that you similarly want to be this tight.
Now you'll have a score where most things just fit automatically, and all you need to do is hit "Enter" after typing in each lick to add a line break -
again, just like how you would
in a word processor
if you wanted each phrase
to be on a separate line.