vertical justification algorithm separates unbracketed staves of multi-staff instruments (making correct organ engraving impossible)
1) load the attached file
2) open: Format > Style... > Page
3) disable vertical justification of staves and play around with normal "staff distance" and "grand staff distance"
4) enable vertical justification of staves and play around with the staff distances and also with the distance factors above/below brackets and braces.
expected behaviour:
An "organ staff" usually uses a group of three staves. One staff for the right hand, one staff for the left hand, and one staff for the pedal. These grouped three staves should stay close together, even if the vertical distance between instruments in a system is increased by automatic vertical justification. Organ music in most cases is notated with both hands braced together, and the pedal staff is unbraced below. And in most professional engravings, the distance between the left-hand-staff and the pedal-staff is smaller (!) than the distance between the hands. This is very important for readability. The pedal should stay very close to the left hand, even a bit closer than the distance between left and right hand.
A combined staff/TAB notation (for example for guitar) uses linked staves, and these staves should also stay close together, when general staff distance is enlarged.
actual behaviour with "disabled vertical justification":
the distance between grouped and linked staves can be changed with the "grand staff distance" setting. This is more or less proper behaviour, pedal and TAB stay with the staves they are grouped or linked to. It seems that all kind of grouped/linked staves are treated as "grand staff". However, there is no possibility to change the pedal distance independent of the braced hands.
actual behaviour with "enabled vertical justification":
the pedal staff and the TAB staff are now treated as individual instruments. The automatic justification algorithm distinguish "braced" and "bracketed" staves from individual instruments, but it does not account for grouped or linked staves and it also ignores line or square brackets. This leads to an abnormal separation of the pedal from the braced hands, and also to a separation of the TAB from the guitar staff.
no workaround:
There is no chance to you reduce the separation of the pedal from the manualiter brace. Even "fixed staff spacers" do not work. The automatic vertical distance justification overrides the manual spacers. You will have to disable vertical justification. Correct organ engraving is impossible with enabled vertical justification.
suggestion for the automatic justification algorithms:
The "Max. grand staff distance" setting should also apply to grouped and linked staves like "pedal" or "TAB". Pedal, TAB and grouped staves in general should be treated as "grand staff", not as individual instruments. Grouped staves could either be treated as "within a brace", even if there is no brace. Or it also would be nice to have an additional distance factor for grouped staves besides brackets and braces, which could be set to 0.9 or 0.8 to tie these staves even closer together.
related issues:
#315052: Vertical justification of staves: "Min. staff distance" also affects grand staves and staff/tab
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Staff distance.mscz | 7.93 KB |
Comments
You're all but one...
And mean #315052: Vertical justification of staves: "Min. staff distance" also affects grand staves and staff/tab as one of the related issues ;-) (the other is a forum topic)
In reply to You're all but one... And… by Jojo-Schmitz
yes, this is a related topic. But the problem is not a missing setting for minimum grand staff distance. The problem is more general. Grouped stave's distance should be calculated as "grand staff distance" and not as "regular staff distance". The distance calculation is wrong with enabled justification. And given that there is a brace or bracket included within the grouped staves (e.g. organ), the extra distance below/above braces/brackets should be applied outside of the group. The distance factor should separate instruments and not braces !!
For Organ there's no linked staff (or if this would be just wrong)
yes, you're right. I am not yet used to musescore's terminology. "Linked" means, that if you write notes to one staff, they will be automaticly translated to the linked staff, right? For organ there are three staves grouped (?) not linked. Or how do you call it? I changed the original description to the correct terminology.
Organ has just 3 staves, independant from one another. And the 3rd one not even bracketed.
Linked staves means staves for the same instrument with automatically identical content, but possible different rendering (normal vs. Tab).
Yes, organ has 3 staves, but as a group they belong together to the same instrument, and should not be treated as individual instruments by the distance algorithm. Please read the "expected behaviour"... And yes... "linked" was the wrong term. And further: linked staves are always grouped to one instrument. So this problem occurs with all unbraced but grouped staves of multi-staff instruments.
This issue seems to remain with musescore 4. The vertical justification of staves in musescore 4 (nightly build) is wrong, too. But with musescore 4, you can use fixed staff spacers as a workaround. It's a very inconvenient solution, but it works.
I'm curious, is it really the case that even within an ensemble, there would be no bracket of any kind connecting the third organ staff to the other two? Seems quite confusing to me as shown in the example. I recognize it is not needed for solo organ music. But the first few examples of ensemble music I found on IMSLP all showed a connecting bracket or brace between all organ staves.
Anyhow, it is indeed an additional bug that a fixed spacer doesn't seem to provide a workaround here, which is unfortunate. See #316025: Fixed spacers do not function with vertical justification enabled - apparently this was fixed, broken, and fixed again?
It should be fixed in 3.x (after 3.6.2) and master, so not in any released version yet.
In reply to I'm curious, is it really… by Marc Sabatella
No, it is espescially an issue for solo organ music !!
I'll attach a score for you to demonstrate. The pedal is far too much separated from the hands and therefore is very uncomfortable to read. As I wrote before, in nearly all prints of organ music that I own, the pedal is closer to the left hand than the distance between hands. A smart algorithm should take account of this and tie the pedal to the hands, independant of bracings.
For an organ part within a larger ensemble you might brace all three lines together, yes. To my knowledge as an organ player there is no fix rule.
Sometimes only the hands are braced and pedal remains unbraced:
https://imslp.org/wiki/Allegro_for_Organ_and_Orchestra%2C_Op.81_(Guilma…
Sometimes all three lines are braced:
https://imslp.org/wiki/Sinfonia_sacra%2C_Op.81_(Widor%2C_Charles-Marie)
A lot of scores (baroque period) only use two staves:
https://imslp.org/wiki/6_Organ_Concertos%2C_Op.7_(Handel%2C_George_Frid…
And I have also seen brackets instead of braces.
So again... A smart distance algorithm should understand, that staves that belong to the same instrument should never be separated. Staves that belong to the same instrument should be treated as "grand staff". This is not only the case for organ, but also for linked staves (guitar/TAB), and there might be more... And if there are braces anywhere within an instrument, the additional distance (set by the "factor for distance above/below brackets or braces") should be applied above and below the instrument! (not above/below the braces)
I tried to get the pedal closer to the left hand using the "Staff/Part Properties" of the pedal stave. Adding negative values to the "Extra distance above staff" field has no effect, since vertical justification is enabled. Vertical justification seems to ignore or override this setting. However, it works fine if vertical justification is disabled.
Workaround: Reduce the "Max. staff distance", to match the "Max. grand staff distance".
The bug here seemt to be that the former works here while it should actually be the latter, even on a 3-staff "Grand staff".
Whether or not Linked staves should also be treated as a Grand staff is at least debatable.
Thanks, I didn't try this before. At least this might work for solo organ music. :-)
But this workaround is useless if you add an additional solo instrument, for example a violin or a trumpet.
However, an intelligent algorithm would treat the whole 3-staff-organ as "grand staff" automatically, independant of braces, and without a need to trick around. And yes, linked staves are debatable. From my personal aesthetic and practical view, linked guitar/TAb staves should also stay together if the system extended, as musicans often read both lines simultaneously.
For those the Grand staff distance is not supposed to work, but there too Staff distance should and does work (and rightfully in that case)
In the case of a solo instrument (violin) accompagnied by organ:
The solo instrument should be separated from the organ by vertical justification and distance factor up to "Max. staff distance".
And the organ pedal should stay with the hands up to "Max. grand staff distance".
Reducing the "Max. staff distance" would also tie the solo instrument to the organ. There is no workaround to get the solo instrument separated again. Even the additional distance by the bracket-distance-factor wouldn't apply. You might add "staff spacers" for each line and each additional instrument, but this would be more than a few steps to solve the probem. Or you might disable vertical justification. But with enabled vertical justification, there is no simple workaround.
Only the solution, that all staves of an instrument are "grand-staff" by default, makes sense.
Sigh... In that case disabling that option is the workaround, as is the use of spacers
:-) Fine... if you think so... sorry for bothering you