Large score graphics
- The issue here is placement of objects on a score. I've attached two PDFs. The first is Page 1 of a piece for orchestra and voices, all staves shown. The second is Page 1 of the same piece, this one with empty staves hidden.
- You'll notice in the first PDF that the page (a large A3 size sheet) isn't big enough for all the staves. Furthermore, there will be several more percussion lines added before the piece is done.
- You'll also notice that the TITLE of the piece is missing from the second PDF (I think it's actually been pushed up, above the page). I'd like to reclaim the title, if there's a way to do that. The title is to the left edge because there's no room for it at the top, and the piece needs to exist both as a full score (for the conductor) and as a reduced score (for everyone else).
- The score would not run off the bottom of the page if the four (soon to be six) single-line percussion staves could be pushed closer together. Is that possible? I tried the 3-line and 5-line drum staves, but complex drum work in such close quarters is really too confusing for players and conductor.
- I'd also like to suggest a small improvement. For orchestral work, it's very useful for the opening page to show all the instruments, so one knows what's coming up. As an option, you might consider "Hide empty staves" to give the user the option of displaying all of the opening page, then condensing everything that follows.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| PDF-1-fullscore.mscz.pdf | 48.01 KB |
| PDF-2-noEmptyStaves.mscz.pdf | 42.01 KB |
Comments
If the page is too small for the music, you can either increase the page size or make the music smaller in Layout -> Page settings-> Page format and Scale.
Next version of MuseScore (2.0) will let your hide empty staves except on the first system.
I suspect the reason the title disappeared on the "hide empty staves" is that you created it not as a title but as text attached to the first staff, and the first staff is hidden. Creating it as an actual title would fix that, but I don't know if you get the formatting you want that way (do see style / edit text style and see what options you have). Or, just make sure the first staff doesn't get hidden in that first system by putting an invisible note somewhere on it. As lasconic says, 2.0 will will have an option to automatically suppress hiding staves in the first system, but I'd recommend using the hidden note trick in the first on every staff for now, so your first score page shows all instruments - that's how scores are traditionally published.
But FWIW, it's pretty common for works like this to not include the title on the first page of the score itself but rather only as a separate title page. And that's what MuseScore would do by default in this situation as well. Yours is a pretty clever solution, though - I do like how it looks!