Advice on how to get this Billings piece to be 2 pages smartly
I would love it if I could find a pleasant way to get all 4 verses of this Billings' piece laid flat in just two pages. Does anyone have any suggestions? PDF attached. I don't have a problem with Musescore, I'm just not smart enough to figure out what's superior to just having the first verse, and then 3 additional verses taking up the heelspace of the 2nd page, like what I was copying from. I don't want to have to make my singers memorize the line with those words, I'd love to just give it to them.
If the best way is 2 verses per 2 pages, ok. It's just annoying because, as you see, it's polyphonic AND strophic. Worst of both worlds.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Billings-Cross Street.pdf | 83 KB |
Comments
Attach a MSCZ file and someone might help try out a few different layouts.
In reply to Attach a MSCZ file and… by underquark
Thank you that's a great idea here it is!
In reply to Thank you that's a great… by Joseph Martin2
Menu option: Format > Page settings > Scaling > Staff space (reduce it)
In reply to Menu option: Format > Page… by DanielR
Thank you! I was mulling it over, and I think the trick is I have to do 2 verses per every 2 pages. But also that. Thank you.
The simplest method is to reduce the stave size. I notice this file has the scale of each stave set individually to 75% (via Staff/part properties), which will certain cause some scaling and spacing oddities. The right way to achieve this is to have them all set to 100%, and to change the spatium in Page settings (1.5mm does the trick).
There is a very annoying shortcoming in MuseScore where lyric syllables cannot extend beyond the measure in which they appear, which often creates extra unwanted space at the end of the bar. Short of risky and tedious fiddling with autoplace settings and offsets there's nothing you can do about this yet, but we're fixing it in 4.5.
There are other things you can do though:
There's more you can do, but that alone gets it to two pages; see the attached. (This is a 4.4 file. I reset positions to default for simplicity.) The last bar of the 3/4 section is still on the second page, but that's not the end of the world as long as the pages are facing each other (which is what you'd want anyway here).
In reply to The simplest method is to… by oktophonie
This is brilliant thank you. If you have any advice on better ways to get all 4 verses for all 4 parts better placed, let me know. Above and below for the bass and soprano, but when you get into the thick of it, is having all 4 for S and A and having the Bass and Tenor share all 4 the way to go, like I had it, or is there a superior way from ages past for how to do it?
In reply to This is brilliant thank you… by Joseph Martin2
The most efficient way (imo) would be to have all 4 between S and A, and all 4 between T and B. There is some slight variance in rhythm which poses a bit of a challenge with the alignment of lyrics, but nothing insurmountable.
In simpler music (like in hymnals) you'd have just two staves, S+A and T+B, two voices in each, with the lyrics just once between the two. That would be a bit of a stretch here.