Additional staff only in part of the song/score

• Sep 2, 2023 - 18:45

MuseScore 4.1.232071203 (e4d1ddf) on MacOS Ventura 13.5.

I am trying to reproduce a score in Modeste Mignon, an old Balzac book. The score transitions from two staffs in the first couple lines, to three (with the third containing the vocals), back to two. I've attached a picture of the transition from three to two at the end.

I found how to add the third staff, but it adds it for whole score. If I click "hide when empty," then it doesn't show the staff signature and the first few measures that have no vocals in one of the lines, which I need.

Is there a way to accomplish this, or do I need to make three different scores, one each for the measures at the beginning/end that only have two staffs, and the large one in the middle that contains the vocals?

Also, as can be seen in the picture, it has four measures per line. I have read and searched everything I can think of in the handbook, but haven't been able to find how to do that. Is there a way to force a wrap to the next line at four measures?

Attachment Size
three-staff-transition.png 1.16 MB

Comments

• Sep 3, 2023 - 21:16

I have (sorry, I should have said). I see nothing that would translate to something like "four measures per line".

Forcing the break also stretches the existing measures to fill the width of the page, and I would prefer that didn't happen, either. I just want four normal (default) width measures per line.

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• Sep 4, 2023 - 00:45

(Replying to myself just so it covers everyone's replies.)

Re Add/remove system breaks, that's still "manual," it just automates hitting Enter. :) What I wanted was to just have it autowrap after X measures. But apparently that doesn't exist, at least in the way I was looking for it.

Re default width, that depends on what you mean by "default." The width of each measure was X when there were 7 measures per line, and it's Y when I forced it to four measures per line, where Y is almost twice as wide as X. In both cases every measure was the same width, so I would call that "default." I was looking for X width measures regardless of how many measures there are per line. Which apparently isn't possible.

The way to "autowrap at X measures" seems to be to reduce the width of the page, and, and do so in such a manner that the width results in X width measures. So the answer to both things seems to be just reduce the page width, albeit it has to be played with to get the desired results. Which is livable, I think. We'll see what happens down the road when I export it.

(I'm not having difficulty with a score, but with MuseScore's operation. And not so much "difficulty" as "ignorance," i.e. not knowing how it works with respect to measures per line. Attaching a score wouldn't accomplish anything for this particular question.)

Thanks for the help, everyone! Mission accomplished, I think.

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