Section break with courtesy time signature OR break with long instrument names?

• Jul 21, 2021 - 01:12

Musescore 3.6.2 on macOS 11. I'm editing a multi-movement work, and I'd like to have a break, with a courtesy time signature, and showing long instrument names on the next system. As far as I can tell, adding a section break gives me no way to show the courtesy time signature, and adding a system/page break doesn't give the option to show long instrument names. Am I missing something, or is there a workaround? Thanks much!


Comments

A workaround...

Use the Image Capture Tool to "take a picture" of the Long Instrument names.
Then you cover the short instrument names with the image by pasting into a frame or onto a note.

Here I pasted the long names into the "2nd Movement" frame: Courtesy time sig.mscz

I used a horizontal frame to get an indentation for the first system of the 2nd movement
You will have to do some arithmetic to make the measure numbers display correctly using Measure Properties if you wish to start from #1in the 2nd movement..
To create a pause in playback between movements, you can use a caesura from the Breaths & Pauses palette and make invisible, if desired.

It wouldn't be common to show a courtesy time signature before new movement, but indeed probably there should be an option to control this for the special cases where it might seem to make sense.

Meanwhile, not using the section break but instead mimicking its effects manually is an option but kind of painful. Perhaps an alternate approach would be to replace the section break with an ordinary system break, then have a single measure between the movements, and put the section break on that, then spend a few minutes hiding that. Eg, a staff type change on that measure, then another on the first measure of the new movement, set to have invisible staff lines etc. Or just cover it with a white graphic. Maybe that's easier than going the other way, maybe not, but it's another option anyhow.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for the advice! I'm starting to think I'll be better off keeping each movement in its own file, and fake the transitions with extra pages that can be trimmed from printing/pdf later. I really need control over which staves appear in each movement in addition to this section break nonsense.

For reference, it's extremely common in older scores (I'm working on a Telemann score) to show courtesy time signatures if the following movement is to be played attacca.

In reply to by Patrick Colvin

Right, attaca movements are the main exception I could think of to the general rule.

But control over which staves appear in which movement is indeed a reason the currently the best solution for you probably is separate files. Otherwise the workarounds with hide empty staves etc get even more painful.

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