Reduce space between systems

• Nov 20, 2023 - 17:24

I am trying to fit one extra system onto my page but cannot reduce space between the systems. I have tried format /style /page/ enable/ and reduced the three Factors down to '1'
but nothing happens to my page. What am I doing wrong?
Can you help please

Attachment Size
SANCTUS.mscz 37.1 KB

Comments

Sorry. It is unclear what your end goal is.
You can use spacers if you want. But if you change anything afterwards, things can get mixed up.
You want to add an extra system but it works better to think in terms of measures and not systems or pages for that matter.
Using the method I suggested above, I made everything small enough to fit on one page with what looked like room for another system Then I added four measures at the end. Put a system break before the added measures. Then just to see what it would look like, I copied four measures from the beginning into them. Extremely fast and easy to do.

Attachment Size
SANCTUS12.mscz 37.7 KB

Format >Style >Page >DISable vertical justification of staves and reduce the Min system distance to 5.5. You can shrink it further than this but I think it would become very crowded.

Attachment Size
SANCTUSS.mscz 38.48 KB

In reply to by bobjp

Yes, i see. I think the original ask is pushing it. Choir singers are often standing up, with the score a fair distance away - while scaling down works, it's getting a bit hard to read (even with my presbyopia). Here, I've reduced the system spacing to 4.5 and fiddled with the lyric upper and lower spacings but I think that's the limit unless bigger paper is used (not a bad idea for choirs, but not so easy to home print).

Attachment Size
SANCTUSSS.mscz 41.17 KB

For 5 systems on the one page...
Compare my settings in Format > Style > Page and look at Min. system distance.
Also, to get a little more space between systems, note the change made to 'Music bottom margin'.
When you make visible the page margins (View > Show > Show page margins) you can see how the music bottom margin can be reduced which then allows more space to be distributed between the systems.
It essentially moves all systems down - closer to the page margin, while still allowing for satisfactory printing within the page margins.

Attachment Size
SANCTUS-2.mscz 40.06 KB

In reply to by John Deegan

I am back again! I followed underquark's instructions with my next piece of music:-
I reduced the size of the music with no difficulty. I then tried to increase the size of the text Edit>Preferences>Appearance (on the left side of the page). The only option is for Body Text Size which I changed from 12 to 16 and then clicked OK but nothing happened the text. I repeated this process but selected the whole text first of all and again nothing happened. I very much appreciate underquark's help in resetting the last piece of music for me but I really MUST learn to do this myself. Thanks for your patience. John

In reply to by John Deegan

You wrote:
My objective is to make the lyrics bigger for my choir to read.

You did not mention that in your original post.
To make lyrics bigger, open my attachment and right click on one lyric then Select > Similar (to highlight all lyrics). In the Properties' panel under 'Text' you will see 11pt 'Size'. Click the up arrow a few times to increase the lyrics font size.

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