How make the page less black
Some of my scores have attracted comments (from people who know what they are talking about) that they look a bit too "black" on the page, the note heads too heavy and large.
I've tried the three different musical fonts I've found in Musescore but they don't really make much difference to this. I have also tried making the staves smaller e.g. scale = 90% but this also brings everything smaller horizontally making the score more dense in a different way.
I cannot find a way of simply making the note heads a few % smaller. Is there a way to do this, or any other way to satisfy my critics (they of course use either Sibelius or Capella!)? I think perhaps scaling the staves to about 92% would be what I'm after, but only if they retained the original horizontal spacing.
Any help appreciated!
Comments
There is not such a setting right now. The fonts are pretty standard sizes, and indeed, are not created by us but by others who are expert on such matters, so I'm not sure what the people who are giving this feedback might be referirng to. Perhaps you are simply trying to space things too tightly for the type of music and intended audience, and would be better off with a looser spacing setting in Style / Measure / Spacing (or, equivalently, select all and increase stretch)? Attaching an example might help us understand what you or your colleagues are talking about.
You can certainly scale the staves smaller *and* then increase the spacing, which would indeed result in an even *less* "black" page.
In reply to There is not such a setting by Marc Sabatella
You might also reduce the staff line thickness in Style > General... > Measure.
In reply to There is not such a setting by Marc Sabatella
I should add that while there is no setting to control notehead size right now, it's been proposed and discussed and might find its way into a future release. See #60446: Add notehead size style setting
In reply to I should add that while there by Marc Sabatella
Actually, if you want to be really subtle (and your music doesn't contain any cue notes or other small sized notes), you can select all noteheads, set them to "Small" in the Inspector, and then experiment with different percentages in Style > General... > Sizes.
In reply to Actually, if you want to be by Isaac Weiss
Thanks for all the suggestions - very useful. On a new score I am experimenting with stave sizes reduced to around 95% and bar spacing increased to 1.3, and the result is better.
For information, this is the score that attracted the comment that it looked a bit too heavy/black:
https://musescore.com/user/72156/scores/2504896
I think in particular it is the demi-semi quaver beams and the big chords that cause the problem (if there is one!).
(I've not yet experimented with changing the settings on that score).
In reply to Thanks for all the by crispin
I guess for that specifically, you could try messing with the settings in Style / General / Beams. But the defaults are pretty standard. I suspect the critique is kind of inherent in the nature of the music - double broken beams are not very pretty no matter how you slice it.