Courtesy bracket for treble clef | Long sensa misura bars | Missing initial bar line on bass clef

• Aug 29, 2023 - 21:04

Hi there,

I've just finished a Musescore draft (attached) for my dad. He's the composer; I'm the tech-head (well, at least relative to him). I've been able to Google away most of the problems I've had with it, but I'm left with these:

  1. How to get the bar line on the first bar of each stave for the lower bass clef part.
  2. How to get parentheses on the 'courtesy' treble clef on bar 15.
  3. How can I get very long sensa misura bars to work properly? At the moment, the only way to get them to carry on in the stave below and not to run off the page is to put the over-running notes into a new bar (e.g. bar 38-39). This messes with the bar numbers, though.

Greatly appreciate your help,

Steve

Attachment Size
Toccatina and Chorale for Organ.mscz 32.23 KB

Comments

"How to get the bar line on the first bar of each stave for the lower bass clef part."
I don't understand the question. Do you mean "How to get the bar number..."?
In that case, you would have to add the bar number manually as Stave Text, and set its style to Bar Number. But this is not a robust solution if the layout changes. See example score, bars 6 and 11.

"How to get parentheses on the 'courtesy' treble clef on bar 15."
You don't need a treble clef there, because the stave is already treble clef at the start of this system. Unlike a dynamic, a clef can't be edited to add parentheses. You could instead use a small treble clef from the Symbols section of the Master Palette. See example score, bar 14.

"How can I get very long sensa misura bars to work properly? At the moment, the only way to get them to carry on in the stave below and not to run off the page is to put the over-running notes into a new bar (e.g. bar 38-39). This messes with the bar numbers, though."
You really can do this by creating separate overflow bars where necessary - and then hiding the barlines on each stave. You will also need to mark each "surplus" bar to prevent the incrementing of the bar count. Right-click an empty part of the bar, choose Bar Properties, then enable "Exclude from bar count". Bear in mind that the bar numbers displayed at the start of each following system will then no longer match MuseScore's internal or "absolute" bar number (which is always reported in the Status Bar). See example score, bar 38 onward.

CAVEAT: all these remarks and the example score refer to MS 3.6.2 (not MS 4.1.1).

In reply to by DanielR

Thanks for your time and reply Daniel.

I don't understand the question. Do you mean "How to get the bar number..."?
Not quite. At the time of posting, the bar line at the start of each stave didn't reach all the way down from the upper bass clef part to the lower. Looking at Jm6stringer's post, it looks like that problem had resolved itself somehow, because the bar line is behaving in his screenshots as desired. Curiously, it's also started working in my copy without any more interventions on my part. Case solved?

You don't need a treble clef [on bar 15]
I have to say, as a non-composer, the choice to put a treble clef just there seemed odd to me, too. I'll mention your idea of a smaller treble clef, if it's 'non-negotiable', to dad.

You will also need to mark each "surplus" bar to prevent the incrementing of the bar count
Brilliant, that did the trick. As you say, it's a shame the apparent bar numbers and the absolute bar numbers no longer agree with one another, but them's the breaks.

Steve

How to get the bar line on the first bar of each stave for the lower bass clef part.

Do you mean to extend the brace to the bass clef staff?
Brace.png

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Hi there, greatly appreciate the illustrated reply. A picture paints a thousand words etc.

As I mentioned in my reply to Daniel, it's not the brace so much as the bar line immediately to the right of it that wasn't behaving. Somewhat eyebrow-raisingly, it's doing what I wanted it to in your screenshots and also now in my project file, when I load it up. Curious!

In reply to by stevejamesdow

"How to get the bar line on the first bar of each stave for the lower bass clef part."

For future reference:
- select the barline which should extend downwards (but does not currently)
- in the Inspector find the Barline section and enable the checkbox "Span to next stave"

What you saw may have been a temporary display problem, which fixed itself after Save-Close-Reopen.

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