Creating a miniature edition
Thanks to all of your wonderful work, I now have a 20+ minute orchestra and vocal composition completed using Musescore. I have to get this formatted so that I can print a miniature edition on 8.5 x 11 inch paper (standard paper size in the US). I just want to take the score as it is with the Musescore defaults and current settings and shirk it proportionally rather than mess with every little detail (in which case I am sure I would ruin everything). If there one command or template I can use to take with score with the (default) sizes I am using now and save it in the right size or reduction percentage that would achieve a miniatire. My goal is someting like what appears on the Norton scores that are bound in textbook form, but with 8.5 x 11 paper size.
Thank you for any suggestions.
Comments
I assume your score is currently in A4 ? Save a copy of your score first.
Then, you can change the score paper size in Layout -> Page settings. It will not shrink the score proportionnally but if you put page breaks and system breaks it will respect them. A4 and letter formats are not proportional so if MuseScore would shrink proportionally you will have flat notes.
Btw, if you are always using Letter, you can change the default for every new scores in Edit -> Preferences -> Score
In reply to I assume your score is by [DELETED] 5
I've converted a lot of A4's to Letter as described. It generally works quite well, and requires very few adjustments afterward.
-- J.S.
In reply to I assume your score is by [DELETED] 5
I apologize that there seems to be some kinf of communication gap. I do not want to change any pitches.
What I want has to do with the appearance of the output.
In terms of interaction on the screen, I can set 100% or 75% and the entire score shrinks to the given percentage.
That is what I want to do in terms of the layout -- ***after I have set the page margins and width.****
In other wirds, I want to set the page width and margins, then tell Musescore to take the score (not the marings) and shrink everything by a certain percent - just for how it appears on the page - no change in the music - no flattening of notes.
What I am trying to create is the style in which scores are provided in books, i.e., smaller than what you would give a performer to play from.
Right now it appears I would have to take each of my 89 pages of .png format and shrink them and then insert it all into a Word document. I was hoping for an alternative.
In reply to Clarification needed by peacenow
Not through MuseScore, true, but what you need can be achieve very quickly with Acrobat Reader:
1) Export your score to .PDF ("File | Save as...")
2) Open it with Acrobat Reader
3) Print it using 8.5 x 11' paper size and choosing "Shrink to printable area" as "Paper scaling": Acrobat will scale the output to fit your page format.
You do not need to change anything in your score. Steps 1) and 2) take less than 1 min; step 3) takes whatever your printer needs to output the pages (and would be roughly the same from MuseScore or from Acrobat).
I imagine other PDF viewers can also do something similar, but I regularly use Acrobat...
M.
In reply to Clarification needed by peacenow
On the top of the screen, right under the line that has "MuseScore" and your file name, click on "Layout", then on "Page Settings" On that dialogue box, use "Scaling" on the left side to shrink the score, then on the right side you can adjust all four margins independently for both odd and even pages. Or, you can set your margins first, then adjust scaling to shrink the score to fit.
-- J.S.
In reply to Clarification needed by peacenow
BTW,, no one ever said anything about changing pitches. I think you might have misinterpreted a comment about getting "flat notes" - I'm pretty sure that just meant, if you resized from A4 to Letter, it would change the aspect ratio and thus the oval notehead would look "flatter".
But yes, I'd say the two options being discussed here are the way to go - either save to PDF then do this in a PDF program, or else save a new copy of the score with both the page size and the scaling factor in page layout reduced accordingly. The former has the advantage of being foolproof - the layout would be guaranteed to stay exactly the same, only smaller. The latter has the advantage of not requiring any other tools, but as you shrink things, MuseScore may try to shift things around. Given the length of the score, I'd probably be going with the first method.
Note what lasconic described works for actually printing the thing, but you presumably want a new PDF file. Acrobat Reader can't do that. You'd need a program that can. I use "CC PDF Converter", which installs as a printer driver. So I'd accomplish what you want by saving to PDF from MuseScore, opening the PDF in Acrobat Reader, starting to print from there with the option to reduce page size, but being sure to select the CC PDF Converter printer driver instead of a real printer. That would then pop up a dialog allowing you to pick a filename to save to, and you'll end up with a new smaller PDF file ready for import.
In reply to BTW,, no one ever said by Marc Sabatella
Thank you for replying.
The printer option will not work because I need to give the completed file for someone else to print copies of. The actual printing and binding is going to be done somewhere else.
The issue is not only shrinking the size but also rearranging the layout. In a miniature edition, often two systems appear on one page rather than having a page that is 50% or more blank.
That is why it is better to do this in Musescore so that it will automatically arrange what goes on what page.
It seems that I will still have to do all of this in Word and format each page separately in the HP picture viewer.
I also have to be able to put a title page and a page with the list of instruments, etc. at the beginning.
In reply to layout and lage size by peacenow
As I said, if you install the CC PDF Converter and follow the steps I describe, the result will be PDF file you can indeed give to someone else. But if you want the layout rearranged, then you are indeed better off using the other option - changing both the page size and scaling from within MuseScore. That shoukd work just fine, and take just a couple of minutes, depending on how much use you had made of explicit system breaks. As long as you shrink the page and scaling by the same factor, it should basically work. You'll just have to fiddle with positions and sizes of fixed elements like titles, page numbers, etc. That part could be a little bit of a pain.
If it were me, I'd probably still go the first method - using CC PDF Converter or something similar to rescale the whole page for you. I'd just start from a copy of the score at full size but with the layout changes you mention wanting.
In reply to As I said, if you install the by Marc Sabatella
The problem is that I don't know how to change the scaling in MuseScore.
I understand how to change the margins.
Is there one command somewhere that would allow me to make everything smaller and have everything still remain in proportion?
In reply to don't know how to change the scaling by peacenow
To change the scaling in MuseScore, click "Layout" -- one of the small words at the top near the left -- then from the dropdown click "Page Settings". There's a place to adjust Scaling on the left side of the box that appears, it's small and about midway vertically.
-- J.S.
In reply to To change the scaling in by John Sprung
Thank you, everyone, for your comments.
Under Scaling, there is a field entitled Space. The number there is .069in (I have everything in inches) Could someone please explain what that number means, so that I can determine how to reset it?
Also, are you saying that if I save the file as .pdf and try to open it in Adobe Acrobat that I can't shrink the size of the image from the Adobe editor? Is that also true for changing the page numbering? In other words, is the pdf file created by Musescore permanently read-only?
In reply to scaling - space by peacenow
The "space" value is literally the size of the spaces in the staff - or more accurately, the distance between lines. Changing this value gives you bigger or smaller staves, and most other elements in MuseScore then scale themselves accordingly.
In reply to scaling - space by peacenow
The PDF created by MuseScore is not readonly. It's just a normal PDF. You should be able to change anything in acrobat. But it's often tedious and it's better doing as much work as possible in MuseScore.
Regarding page numbering, you can change the number of the first page in MuseScore in Layout -> Page settings.