adjusting staves
there is one ... and only ONE thing that makes me keep Finale on my macbook. Fix this, and I am 100% Musescore.
the issue relies to preparing scores for publishing. I would really like to see musescore give me the ability to click and drag staves up and down to increase/decrease distance between them. I do a lot of acapella choral scores with piano reductions, and currently Musescore's method of addressing distance between staves is a bit clunky. Sometimes stave distances will be different from page to page. Currently, I so all of my composing in Musescore, then export it to Finale to beautify the score for publishing.
Fix this one thing, and Finale is kicked out the door.
thanks!
paige
Comments
If you mean change the stave distance within a system across all pages, it already does this:
Hold Shift, then use the left mouse button to drag downwards on an empty part of a measure. You'll drag down the staff within the system (expanding the system as a consequence).
I would like to see this feature, too. A solution to do this for only one system would be most welcome!
BTW: currently, in MuseScore 3, not even the SHIFT+drag works.
Thank you!
In reply to I would like to see this by rowild
For a single system, spacers are currently the way to go. Feel free to file a feature request to allow some kind of mouse combination method for inserting them (alt+drag perhaps? don't know if that's still available though).
I'm not sure if it would actually help you out that much faster as it only saves one drag (from palette to score) and a double click (spacer editing mode) and the operation of adjusting stave distance for a single system *should* be of rather low occurence.
As for MuseScore3: Thank you for helping with testing it out, but keep in mind that it is also still in an early implementation stage. The scores you create with it today might not work in a future beta and/or the final release.
Now that the warning notice is out of the way: The main goal of MS3 is making the automatic layout smarter, including the automatic calculation of vertical space required. If you find bugs/regressions with it (like Shift-drag not working yet) feel free to enter them into the issue tracker or ask about them in the Technology Preview forum.
In reply to For a single system, spacers by jeetee
"bugs/regressions with it (like Shift-drag not working yet)"
Already done since a few weeks: #106341: Setting Grand staff distance and Shift + drag no longer works
In reply to For a single system, spacers by jeetee
Thank you for your response!!!
I think the automatic spacing of systems is working quite nice so far!
But I keep bumping into the "first page" problem. Whenever I find a setting that works out for most of a multi-page score, the first page needs special treatment. In most case it needs the systems to be "pulled together" vertically, which is the opposite functionality of the current spacers.
Of course, I could always adjust the global settings to make the first page work, but then all the other systems look squeezed and it would take quite an amount of work to adjust the remaining score.
Spacers work on the measure to which they are assigned, right? That means whenever something happens that moves that specific measure to another system (like adding measures in the same system or removing some measures from the previous system), the spacing for that very system in question gets lost. I would rather like to see the spacing fixed to the specific system than to a specific measure. In a long run I could imagine that an ALT-Drag functionality would be way easier and less time consuming.
Would be great to read how others think about that.
Thank you!
In reply to Thank you for your by rowild
A 'negative' spacer would be nice for this. See #61041: Negative staff spacer
In reply to Thank you for your by rowild
"That means whenever something happens that moves that specific measure to another system (like adding measures in the same system or removing some measures from the previous system), the spacing for that very system in question gets lost. I would rather like to see the spacing fixed to the specific system than to a specific measure."
The potential issue you mentioned in the first sentence is what makes the idea in your second sentence problematic. A system isn't a set thing; lines may break in different places at any time.
In reply to "That means whenever by Isaac Weiss
Well, there is always a "System 1", "System 2", "System 3" etc. The idea is to assign the staff spacing to the system.
But of course that solution brings its problems, too. There might very well be the case that in the course of re-layouting a score a system might disappear and all the music might shift. Then a re-adjustment of all the systems might be necessary...
At the moment, I try to stick with the rule: put the spacer onto that measure that "disturbs" a system most. Don't know if that is a general suggestion from MuseScore, but I find it working out quite often...
However, an "absolute spacer" would be very welcome!!!
In reply to Thank you for your by rowild
"That means whenever something happens that moves that specific measure to another system (like adding measures in the same system or removing some measures from the previous system), the spacing for that very system in question gets lost."
It can be as little as adding an accidental that does that. This is why I always finish a score, proofread and ready to go before I work on the staff distances where needed. That way I do it once just before going to Pdf or print.
The first page problem seems manageable to me. You have to play with the minimum and maximum system distances a bit and things will fall just right, a little tighter on the first page, a little wider on the following pages. Sometimes quite a bit wider if you want to avoid tricky page turns (less of a problem in vocal music of course).
Hey friends,
I love that I stumbled across this a few months ago. It has proven to be quite useful!! However, today as I write a piece for my orchestra for Christmas, I find that I can't grab a staff and drag it downwards. I wanted to move the bottom two staves down a bit so my chords don't overlap the words.
What I found is **IF YOU HIDE AN INSTRUMENT INSTEAD OF DELETING IT** this feature won't work... at least not for me under version 2.0.3 in Windows 7.
It will "register" that you're dragging the staff (staves) down, but it won't visually appear to do so until you delete the instrument you are not using. After deleting the hidden instrument I had to make my page 10 times taller (thankfully you can do that in MuseScore!!) to find my two staves I've tried to drag down for 10 minutes, and then drag them back up. Not sure if anyone else encountered this problem when it seems to work under all other circumstances; check if you've hidden an instrument.
Sorry for kicking long-dead thread out of the grave, but I have a partial solution for the problem of spacing, when shift+drag doesn't work.
If you need to have more space between two staves, add new line of lyrics (ctrl+L) to the staff above, and fill it with some kind of whitespace, eg. no-break space (ctrl+space). It works only on current system, but it's still better than nothing.
I don't know how to get rid of gaps, though.
In reply to Sorry for kicking long-dead… by innfilter
This thread is still dead since ctrl+shift does not work in version 3 and the rules are so different that version 3 has different ways to adjust spacing. One thing that has never changed is that right clicking the staff, selecting staff/part properties and increasing the extra space value will put extra space above the staff on every system. Another thing that is still true is that using a spacer from the breaks and spacers palette can be used to increase the space between individual staves, though this is very likely not necessary in version 3.
If you have a score with too large a gap, starting a new thread and attaching the score will get you suggestions on how to fix it.