help with spacing and staff labels

• Jul 22, 2022 - 23:38

Hi guys!

I'm coming up dry searching for answers to two vexing layout issues, but I bet you know the answers :-)

1) I want more space between the rehearsal marker "Ending" and the system above it. When I tell the Staff/Part for more "Extra Distance above staff", it not only affects all systems, but doesn't really control distance from the rehearsal marker. And "minimum distance" on the rehearsal element only affects its distance from the bottom system, not the one above. Tried a few other things, and am out of ideas. Clearly, it's too visually crowded.

2) I want the staff labels "Lead" and "Harm." to only appear in the second system; I want it hidden from all the others to reduce clutter. Again, I tried a bunch of things but can't find a way to do this.

Thanks in advance to the experts!

Dave

Attachment Size
Something for Sellers - Lead Sheet.mscz 25.44 KB

Comments

For 1 Try https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/breaks-and-spacers#spacers

For 2 add a section break at the end of the first system. These are really intended to separate sections (a bit if a clue in the name there) so that the long instrument names are displayed at the start if a new section. If you open stave properties by right clicking in a measure after the section break you can delete the short instrument name completely. You can do it similarly at the start if your score by right clicking in the first system - before the section break.

See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/breaks-and-spacers#section-break for more details

"Extra distance above staff" affects only the current staff, but it does indeed affect it on all systems - same as all other settings in this dialog. It's meant for ensemble scores where you want extra space between woodwinds and brass, etc. Largely moot now that MuseScore does that automatically.

As SteveBlower says, you want a spacer above your ending. The suggestion of using section breaks to get the staff names to appear on the second system is good, if a bit unorthodox. I might instead just add staff text and position it as desired (use a horizontal frame to indent if needed). Realistically, for this chart, I might also consider just putting the harmony part on the same staff in two voices, but that's obviously a bigger editorial decision.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

> Realistically, for this chart, I might also consider just putting the harmony part on the same staff in two voices, but that's obviously a bigger editorial decision.

Good call, Marc. I debated this. This is supposed to be a jazz lead sheet, and I really don't want to confuse my players with a part that perhaps only I will be playing on what is already going to be a new song. So I was debating whether to even include the "descant" at all. So here, I shifted it up an octave to keep the voices from overlapping and also used the "small" note head feature, and put a staff text to keep from confusing people; not sure if there's a better way to indicate this.

Still fits on one page, and the overall look is I think pretty clean and readable.

Thanks, guys!
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