8 bars of chord changes/slashes per line?
Hello, I wrote about this before, and you were very quick to help me - really appreciated. But as I've experimented more with this problem, I just want to ask -
Is there a way to select ONLY the chord-changes/slashes part of a score and make the spacing smaller? You showed me how to make the general spacing smaller, but then the notes are small and hard to read.
I would like to have 8 bars of slashes/chord changes per line without affecting the rest of the score. In jazz this is such a general requirement, to have 8 bars of chords per line - it really affects playability, and lets the player see the form in front of them.
Why can't I just select 32 bars and make the spacing smaller?
Comments
You can select 32 bars and make the spacing smaller using the shortcut "{" to reduce the "stretch" of the selected bars. If you want to increase the stretch use "}". See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/measure-operations#layout-stretch
Reducing stretch should do the trick in most cases. It depends on your page size, your staff size, the music font you are using, and other settings. If you continue to have trouble, please attach your score and we can assist better.
In reply to Reducing stretch should do… by Marc Sabatella
Hi Marc, attaching a score. This is one where I made "staff space" scaling (page settings) small enough to keep 8 bars of chords per line. But the notes are way smaller than I want, even after I "stretched" them a lot - as you can see.
In reply to Hi Marc, attaching a score… by pex3
I am not seeing the attachment. But FWIW, I checked with a file you attached in another thread, and in that one, reducing stretch as described above worked perfectly.
In reply to I am not seeing the… by Marc Sabatella
Sorry! Here's the attachment.
In reply to Sorry! Here's the attachment. by pex3
This one already fits, I guess becauise you reduced the staff size. But increase it - take staff space up to 1.7 mm, say - and all it takes is couple of presses of "{" to make most of those lines fit. You can make this happen more automatically by tweaking a couple of settings in Format / Style / Measure - you can play with "Spacing" and "Mininum note distance".
BTW, I'd also consider removing those abbreviated staff names, or simplifying them to just 1 & 2. That's stealing precious space from the rest of the page.
In reply to This one already fits, I… by Marc Sabatella
OK, thanks! But I did have some problems before at 1.7 staff space, sometimes then the 8 bars of chords would not stay 8 per line! But Hmmm I will try changing the part names, maybe that will do it...
In reply to OK, thanks! But I did have… by pex3
Part names aren't happening in that section, so that won't help. But perhaps lowering "Minimum note distance". The slashes in the MuseJazz font are a little less vertical than I'd like, and it causes the layout algorithms to think they require more space horizontally than they really do. Reducing the minimum note distance helps. It could possibly result in some other systems getting too crowded as MuseScore tries to squeeze an extra measure in here or there, but if that happens, just add line breaks.
Anyhow, it definitely worked for me to select those 32 bars and reduce stretch.
In reply to Part names aren't happening… by Marc Sabatella
Hey Marc, the "minimum note distance" totally did the trick for me. Thanks very much! I wonder - to many the idea that slashes actually are "notes" is probably obvious. I didn't make that connection though, and so didn't see any way to make my slashes more closely spaced. Since almost any jazz score (and many pop/rock/etc.) has slashes, would it be worth it to instead call it "Minimum note/slash distance"? If I had seen that, I definitely would have used it....
In reply to Hey Marc, the "minimum note… by pex3
I can see why this would not be obvious. But if we changed that wording, we'd probably also need to change every other use of the word "note" as well. Probably better to find a way to just make what is happening more obvious. The fact that if you select a slash you see it says "Note" in the status bar, and the Inspector, etc, is meant to be some clue at least. But probably it would be better if this particular problem just didn't happen somehow, like there was some special setting on these that caused it to ignore the minimum note distance setting.