TAB: Increasing bar width causes extra TAB clefs to appear in score
Open the attached score and increase the minimum bar width (Style > General > Bar/Measure) to 10 sp (say). Extra unwanted TAB clefs appear in the score that shouldn't be there.
I have also seen the same thing happening in some scores when "Spacing (1=tight)" is increased.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| bar_width_tab_clef.mscz | 28.56 KB |
Comments
This happens because your score contains explicit clef changes at bars 14, 21, and 26 - as if at one point you had actually dragged a clef to those measures. Which is to say, MuseScore is treating this score correctly at this point, honoring that explicit clef change.
On the assumption you did *not* in fact deliberately add an explicit clef change to those measures, the question is, what happened to make MuseScore think those clefs were explicit changes rather than just the normal clefs that are automatically generated at the beginning of each system? Which is to say, any idea how to reproduce this in a new score?
To be clear: given that the score is in the state is in now, the current behavior is correct: explicit clef changes are *supposed* to be honored no matter what. If there is a bug, it has to do with how the score got into this state in the first place.
You can reproduce the bug with the attached score:
(1) Verify normal behaviour. Set min bar width to 10 and spacing to 1.8 (just for argument). The score behaves as expected.
Reset back to 5 and 1.2.
(2) Make sure "View invisible" is ticked in the view menu. Select all TAB clefs (right-click on first TAB clef and use "select all in same staff"). Uncheck the "visible" option in the Inspector.
Again, set min bar width to 10 and spacing to 1.8 (just for argument). Now view the score again. You can clearly see the extra "invisble" TAB clefs.
How could you tell that an explicit clef change had been added to the score?
Well, the symptom you described is a pretty clear sign there is an explicit clef change, also you would see the same if you tried changing staff size, stretch, adding line breaks, etc - anything that changes which measure starts a system. So then I opened the MSCX file from within the MSCZ in a text editor, and confirmed there are explicit clef elements in those measures.
Setting a clef to "invisible" is equivalent to making the clef change explicit, so if that is what you did, then this is not a bug.
Think of it this way: normally, clefs other than the first as "temporary" ("generated" is the technical term) in that they appear in whichever measures happen to be the first measures of their respective system. The clefs disappear from those measures and reappear in other measures if the layout changes so that systems start with different measures.
The moment you set any explicit property on a clef - changing visibility, color, or position - you are telling MuseScore that clef is important to you, and therefore it becomes "permanent", meaning that clef will continue to appear in that same measure with those same properties even if the layout changes.
So, can you confirm that this is how your original file got into that state? You explicitly changed some property of the clef (eg, visibility), thus marking it as permanent?
Yes, the initial cause of the problem in "bar_width_tab_clef" was that I set all the TAB clefs, except the first, to invisible.
Rationale: The TAB clef doesn't have to appear on every line and some will chose that option for aesthetic reasons. See Giuliani studies , for example.
In that case, use Staff Properties to turn off the clefs rather than hiding them one by one.