"keep measures on the same system" not working

• Dec 19, 2022 - 21:46

I highlight all 8 of the bars I want to keep on the same system and select this in the layout pallette. 1 bar is stretched to take up a whole system and the other 7 are placed in a system below. Is this a bug? I prefer to conform my systems to the phrase length, even if it does look kind of squishy.

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Comments

• Dec 20, 2022 - 09:04

That element doesn't do what you think it does. It's labelled "Keep bars on same system" not "Force bars on same system".

What it does:

It hints the layout algorithm that if the latter of the grouped bars doesn't fit within the current system instead of placing a layout break to flow just that one not-fitting bar onto the next system, it should place the break the bar before it; so that those two bars will end up on the same system if possible.

What it doesn't do:

Change style settings for your score
Change stretch for bars

How then to approach your scenario

  1. Don't make use of this element at all.
  2. Use Format → Add/remove system breaks to insert hard breaks every 8 bars.
    3a. Adjust stretch for bars that can "almost" fit together onto a system to see if you can force them
    3b. Consider a smaller score scaling in Format → Page Settings to make your music fit.
    3c. Look at any of the other style settings that influences score layout (which are plenty!)

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• Dec 20, 2022 - 10:54

To be honest: I would suggest to remove this layout symbol from the default palette (moving it to "more").
This function seems super special while being very hard to comprehend. People expect Sibelius's "make into system" but MuseScore works much better in my opinion: If you reduce the stretch and measures still don't fit into one system, it means that there is not enough space available for all measures to fit without collision. That's actually a wonderful thing to know. Makes me sleep much better.

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• Dec 20, 2022 - 17:31

I agree with this... definitely expected "make into system" functunality here.

I would still like to have a way to force bars to the same system. I'll try the options listed above, but if there were a one click solution that could achieve this, even if it looked terrible, I'd appreciate it from an organizational perspective. If it truly looks awful I can always go back and make it more legible in the "editing" phase of making my score.

tldr, "make into system" is the one and only thing I miss about Sibelius and I want Musescore to have it too

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• Dec 20, 2022 - 18:21

I am often in need of horizontal space as I want to control each and every system break while writing and not allow any random breaks. I apply all the breaks, then, if some measures don't fit, I reduce streching first, then, if it still doesn't fit; I tweak page and style settings until it does. I do like this behavior since I can be very sure that nothing will collide horizontally. This also allows the engraving to be consistant across the entire score.

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• Dec 23, 2022 - 21:05

Also attempting to come from SIbelius here and massively missing the "make into system" functionality. I'm having a little trouble figuring out how to adjust the stretch or page settings to get the desired result. It seems a little odd to me that 8 bars of slash notation is by default too big to fit into a single system.

Could anyone recommend specific page sizing settings that might remedy this?

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