Removing barlines that stretch across two staves

• Jan 11, 2021 - 07:58

Hi there,
I'm having trouble figuring out how to make sure that the barlines don't stretch across two staves that aren't interlinked. In this case it makes no sense that bari and ten sax share barlines. It only confuses reading. How can I change that?

All the best, Victor

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Skærmbillede 2021-01-11 kl. 08.57.36.png 31.03 KB

Comments

• Jan 11, 2021 - 08:25
  1. Double click a barline in that tenor staff.
  2. Drag the bottom box (that now connects to the next staff) back up to the tenor staff.
  3. Click on an empty spot in the score.

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• Jan 11, 2021 - 09:09

Note though, that normal practice is to have barlines extending across instrument sections - sax, brass, strings etc. I note that the tenor and bari sax parts are joined by a bracket at their left hand end which presumably extends upwards to a couple of altos. I would expect all the staves enclosed by a bracket to have continuous barlines connecting them. Doing this helps conductors to keep track of where instruments are located.

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• Jan 11, 2021 - 16:53

Indeed, by default in the various templates this is set up automatically. And as of MuseScore 3.6, it will be done automatically even if you don't use a template.

The correct layout should have barlines connecting all instruments of the same family. So in a big band score, all saxophones are connected in one group, all trumpets in another, all trombones in another. See for example this classic:

https://d2fizz4npx5v6x.cloudfront.net/scores-png/2/2233872.png

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• Dec 27, 2023 - 18:13

I'm happy to see that this feature is still the same in MuseScore 4.2 :-)

In case anyone is wondering why connecting instrument families might not be ideal behavior on a score, I have three use cases:

  1. Writing a score for a band with multi-instrumentalists and organiing the parts by player. The parts get connected based on the initial instrument, which might not be right for the bulk of the score. And in general, with (for example) a rock band with 3 single-instrument players and a multi-instrumentalist, I usually want the parts separate because they are crafted for a specific player.

  2. With several guitar (including bass guitar) parts using linked regular+tab staves, it's a lot easier to follow if the link staves are connected, but the guitars and bass are not. (Actually, I'd probably like this if both the regular and tab staves show, but if set up to be all-regular or all-tab, I'd connect the sections, but now we're getting overly complicated... :-)

  3. To write parts for the Mellotron (a 1960s-70s tape-based sampler keyboard), I set the instrument to whatever is on the tapes being used for that section (e.g. "Violins (section)" for the famous 3 violins tapes used on many prog rock songs, or "Flute" for the flute tapes as used on the intro to "Strawberry Fields Forever"), and change the label for the part to "Mellotron (3 violins)" / "Mtron. Vlns.", "Mellotron (flute)" / "Mtron. Fl.", etc. And adjust the clef and range accordingly. But if this connects to anything at all, it should connect with keyboards, not strings (or woodwinds, or choir, or...)

Anyway, I agree that it's good default behavior, there are just good reasons why orchestral-style sections aren't right in all ensembes.

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