How to make chart smaller

• Mar 25, 2021 - 05:26

Hello,
How can I make this chart smaller? 3 pages would be better. The music is too big.
Thanks!
Vivian

Attachment Size
Dino_Pintando_o_7_cordas by Sivuca--2 lines.mscz 26.41 KB

Comments

• Mar 25, 2021 - 22:25

Well, it s the old default, as of MuseScore 3.6 it is now 1.75mm. The old values was exactly 5 "points" high, where a "point" is 1/72 of an inch. This is a size that seemed logical around the time of the invention of the printing press, but maybe not so much anymore :-).

The score here is indeed larger than average, although by lead sheet standards maybe not that large - they tend to be printed a bit bigger than usual. But that text is enormous, I'd recommend backing that down as well. Unless this is meant for a visually impaired musician who is only interested in reading the chords, not the notes, in case really it's pretty good as is.

Really, it's the empty second staff that's making this take four pages as is - if that isn't going to be used, why not just delete it?

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• Mar 26, 2021 - 18:48

Thanks, I reduced the chord text size, much better! My next step was to try to figure out how to get it onto two pages, but I see you did that. Just what I need...although it would be good for me to learn how to adjust the number of measures on each system, which appears to be how you accomplished that.

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• Mar 26, 2021 - 19:27

Where am I supposed to start? There too much on this page. I appreciate you doing it for me but I was asking how I can do it myself. Giving me a link to a page that I have already struggled with doesn't make sense to me. Where exactly do I start?

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• Mar 26, 2021 - 19:49

To open the Text Styles dialog, select Format→Style...→Text Styles.
This dialog allows you to set the formatting of all text styles. Individual text styles can also be set from the Inspector.

Open the attached image, in the central column select the element you want to modify, in the right column the relative settings.

Attachment Size
21032601.png 123.92 KB

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• Mar 26, 2021 - 23:06

Instead of messing with selecting all similar, much easier - and far more effective as well - to just click the "Set as style" button ("S" icon) right next to the control. But unfortunately, for MusicXML imports, a lot of the formatting is "baked in", represented as hardcoded font values rather than using stylrs. So it often takes more work. If you attach the original MusicXML we can probably advise better.

For number of measures, it is quite simple, think like a word processor. if you want fewer measures on a line,
just hit enter
after the measure where you want
the line break to appear
(just like I did here).

If you want more measures to fit on a line that your current page and font size fits, well, then just as with a word processor, you'll need to change one or the other. Well, there are other settings that can be adjusted too, but the details depend very much on the specifics of the situation. So if you find yourself in that situation after further edits - where you think you have the page and font sizes you want, but some systems have fewer measures than you'd prefer - we can help guide you as to which other settings you might want to play with. This would be like messing with the intra-word spacing in a word processor - possible, but not something the vats majority of people would ever do.

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• Mar 26, 2021 - 23:08

Actually, now that I understand this came from MusicXML and that you really just seem to want it to look normal, I have what is probably a simpler and more effective idea - just create a fresh now score from scratch set up the way you like, then copy and paste the content into it. Often much more efficient than trying to remove every last vestige of inappropriate formatting that was applied in some other program.

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• Mar 27, 2021 - 03:40

Hmmm...good idea! I'll try that next time I have an XML file, which will probably be next Monday or Tuesday. I appreciate learning MuseScore and that it opens Finale files! But it sounds like the importing creates problems, so good to know the best way to import.

Wait...FYI, I don't have Finale, so will need to open the new score in MuseScore

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• Mar 27, 2021 - 16:50

Well, it's not that importing creates problems, it's that the scores itself seems to already have formatting you don't like, and MuseScore faithfully recreated that formatted you don't like. Whoever created this score in Finale must have made things really big and not spaced as you'd like. So it's really best to just start the formatting over with a clean slate.

In Edit / Preferences / Import you will see some options to control how much formatting Musescore preserves from the original file. You probably want to keep as little as possible, and just let MuseScore apply its own defaults.

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• Mar 27, 2021 - 20:45

I went to Edit / Preferences / Import and it opened in Import. Under MusicXML I unclicked Import Layout and System and Page Breaks, and clicked Apply Edwin. Those are the only options I found that seem to apply. Sound good, or are there others?
And when I important the next XML chart from Finale, is it OK to open it in MuseScore, or should I do the cut and pasting you mentioned above?
Thanks so much!!

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• Mar 28, 2021 - 04:05

Those are the right settings, yes. Unfortunately if the next MusicXMl file you import has as many strange formatting things as this, that probably won't be enough. But to be clear: when I mentioned cut & paste, I mean, after importing into MuseScore. You can't cut and paste from some other program. Without seeing the file in question, it's impossible to advise further really, so when you get, attach it here and we can see what we're dealing with.

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• May 19, 2021 - 16:42

I've replied in the other thread. For the record, this is a forum where many people volunteer their time to help, and often you'll have a response within the hour, but there is never any guarantee any particular person will respond at any particular time. I'm here most days but not all, and often someone else will have responded before me.

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