widows and full pages
Systems with a single bar
When a printer sees a single line at the top of a page and nothing else he calls it a widow and tries to remove it. In music setting it’s similar. We might not want to see a system with a single bar. How can we remove this effect?
Is there a setting that prevents such systems from being created at all?
If it does appear is there a foolproof method of suppressing it?
If not must we resort to fiddling with the breaks for the systems above and below?
Fill the page
It often happens that the last side is not full; indeed it may be only half full. Here aesthetics and a feeling for uniformity might encourage us to fill that last side. We can do this by trial and error; we adjust sp upwards a little at a time until we achieve the full side we want. Will this always work – or will we get a sizable gap at the end of the last side whatever we do? Is there an option that says ‘fill the sides’? I guess not.
Comments
There is no automated orphan control in MuseScore. There are a few possibilities to eliminate the orphan. First is make sure there is no system break before it. If not, then select that measure and the previous system and press { a few times, this will normally fix it. Another option is to do something to decrease the spacing between staves (or systems if there is only 1 instrument) so you can fit more systems on a page. There is often something that can be moved to decrease the space between one staff and the staff above it. As a last resort you can use the fixed spacer down in the breaks and spacers palette and decrease its distance to force staves close together. I normally only have to resort to this when I have a piano score with cross staff notation.
In reply to There is no automated orphan… by mike320
Not being very musical and literally only being able to work out notation lengths I had no idea what you were talking about, but had one bar musescore had given a whole line. I went to the end break in the bar before, chose section break, tapped on it a couple of times and it worked. Thanks.