measures

• Oct 22, 2019 - 01:59

i tried both appending measures an adding several measutes, but the additional measure length was much shorter than the extant measures. why is this and can it be changed easily?

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• Oct 22, 2019 - 03:40

The measures are no narrower than the minimum width set in format->settings. Once you start entering notes into the measures, they will probably become wider unless you only enter whole notes. If you put a system break in a measure besides the last measure on the line, the fact that measures after the break have moved down to the next system will make those left on that line wider. In short, don't worry about how narrow the measures are until all of your measures are filled.

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• Oct 22, 2019 - 03:49

thanks very much.. i'm a little confused here. Actually, although i can't remember the details. for some reason a double bar appeared at one point and i had to add measures to get enough space to finsh the piece. maybe this is the problem. i would like 4 measures per line; maximum 5, so what should the minimum width be set as ot accomplish this?

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• Oct 22, 2019 - 04:42

Don't worry about the width of the measures. Enter your score without regard to how it looks. When you're done, add system breaks in the last measure you want on a system (or line as you may call it). To do this, select the measure and press the return key on the alphanumeric keyboard. This is also the same way to get rid of an existing system break if you put one in the wrong spot. The measure widths will take care of themselves.

You can of course break down the score to smaller sections of several systems or a page at a time. But basically, let the program do what it wants while you enter the notes. This will save you from having to reformat the score later.

When I create a score for one instrument (or parts from a larger score) I'll insert system breaks so the measures are not crammed together and text won't run off the right side of the page from the last measure on a system. Depending on the instrument, it may by 2 or 3 measures because of a lot of notes or it may be 6 or 7 measures because it's mostly whole notes. It may even be a lot more if there's a multi-measure rest.

When you add measures to the end of the score, if they can fit on the last system, measures on the last system will shrink to accommodate them. When there are too many for the last system, measures will automatically start on the next system. A few measures will be very wide, the more measures on the system the narrower they get, but don't be concerned with this. When you add notes to them, they will get wider and measures will move down to the next system as needed to make room for them.

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• Oct 22, 2019 - 05:07

To summarize: measures in MuseScore are always as narrow as they can reasonbly be by default, to allow as many measures measures per line as possible, so your piece takes as few pages as possible. If you wish to spread things out more, that's fine. The recommended way is to just add line break - go through line by line, decide where you want the line to end, elect that measure, press Enter.

You can also go to Format / Style / Measure and increase the "Spacing" to make all measures wider by default. Do not mess with the minimum measure width for this purpose - this will cause the measures to get wider, sure, but not necessarily in correct proportion to each other.

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• Oct 22, 2019 - 15:31

Here's the difference:

Spacing is the space between notes. I mean, space between notes is relative to the duration of the note, but the Spacing settings controls changes all of those spacings proportionately. So it has an affect on any measure, any width and will basically scale everything to be wider than the default. Empty measures get only slightly wider, measures with lots of notes get wider by a larger amount.

Minimum measure width is what it says: the minimum width of a measure. Empty measures instantly get that wide. Measures that are already wide aren't affected. At least, in theory, the reality is everything is affected as part of the effort to stretch systems to fill the width of the page.

In any case, I still recommend keeping the spacing on the low side and relying more on manual line breaks, because that way you can easily decide the most logical place for the break - not right in the middle of a complex phrase, timing the breaks to get rehearsal letters or other landmarks at the beginnings of systems.

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• Oct 22, 2019 - 15:53

If you have a special situation - like a lead sheet or a children's book - where you literally want exactly the same number of measures per line (for the whole score or an extended section of it that you have selected), then you can use Format / Add/Remove System Breaks, to add breaks every 4 bars or whatever. Normally, though, in most music this isn't the right answer, it really requires more human expertise to decide the best places. Even in a lead sheet, if there are voltas, or pickups, or just a section of a tune that isn't 8 or 12 bars long, you often need to deviate from the 4-per-line. But, anyhow, the command is there for the situations where it does make sense.

And yes, Undo works, for this and pretty much everything.

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