Formatting Question - Staff Distance
I think this is the first time I've had this issue. The chord symbols between the Staff and Grand Staff are coinciding with the lyrics. See attached.
I'm having trouble understanding the options. The Style is set to 'Disable vertical justification'. If I increase the Staff Distance eventually the lyrics and chords move away from each other. What I'm wondering is, why doesn't the software recognize the presence of both lyrics and chords and space appropriately, automatically? The Style settings only provide enough space when Lyrics and Chords directly coincide with each other.
I changed the setting to 'Enable vertical justification of staves' but I'm having a lot of trouble trying to increase the spacing to allow for the chords without somehow having huge spaces between systems. I'm obviously very new at this. I appreciate whatever guidance you can provide. Thanks!
I uploaded the file for reference.
Thanks.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Capture.PNG | 25.31 KB |
| sm-Draw_Me_Close-Bb.mscz | 38.36 KB |
Comments
You can use a 'Staff spacer'.
![Staff_spacer.png]( "Staff_spacer.png")
See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/breaks-and-spacers#spacers
In reply to You can use a 'Staff spacer'… by Jm6stringer
Thank you; that works perfectly of course. But, I guess, why can't I set a fixed distance between the vocal and piano? I tried to do that using the Staff Distance but it really messed with the formatting elsewhere in the document.
In reply to Thank you; that works… by Lets Rock
You can, if you wish, but of course, then there will be collisions galore. Can you explain in more detail exactly what you would want that fixed distance to accomplish?
In reply to You can, if you wish, but of… by Marc Sabatella
I think the fixed distance would be for symmetry, whitespace, balance in what you're looking at. In my opinion, if the spacing, number of staves, etc. changes from page to page it would be distracting to the reader.
What was suggested was to fix the spacing on the lines where it's needed. What I'm wondering is how to set the minimum distance for the whole score. I tried that but then somehow the formatting in other areas expanded such that there were only two "lines" of music on a page. I need to practice with the min/max spacing settings I guess. I was doing something wrong.
MuseScore does space things out to avoid collisions between the lyrics themselves and the chords. What it doesn't do is have the additional smarts to recognize issues that are not outright collisions but just visual confusion, like if a chord symbol on one staff appears next to the lyric on another. It also doesn't recognize the lyric extenders (underscores used to indicate melisma or tied notes) and thus can cause outright collisions there. We tried to fix that but couldn't find a good way.
The biggest thing you could do to help this score is to move the chords to where they normally belong - above the top staff. Check published sheet music and you'll see it is almost invariably done that way, as it normally yields the most compact / least visually confusing arrangements. So, try selecting all chord symbols (right-click one, Select / All Similar Elements), Ctrl+X to cut, then click the rest in the first measure of the top staff, Ctrl+V to paste. Instant improvement.
BTW, your score is not currently set to disable vertical justification, and that's a good thing. Disabling vertical justification would be a mistake, it would preventing MuseScore from adding the space it would normally need to add to balance out your pages and in many cases also prevent exactly the sort of issue you are seeing here. For instance, vertical justification would allow MuseScore to automatically spread the staves and systems out more if you added page breaks to have only three systems per page.
BTW, another way to avoid the visual confusion and occasional collision with lyric extenders would be to right-click the top piano staff (the one with the chord symbols), Staff/Part Properties, and increase the "Extra distance above staff" to allow room for the chord symbols to not interfere with anything else. or go around manually adding spacers, but that would extremely tedious and "fragile", likely to produce wrong results if the page layout ever changes in any way that affects which measures are on which systems.
But again, none of that is needed here once you move the chord symbols where they belong.
In reply to MuseScore does space things… by Marc Sabatella
Marc, in general, thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my (and others, of course) posts in the forum. I've never witnessed this level of support for PAID software, much less something free.
That being said, the chord placement is due to my dear friend, the aged piano player in the group for whom I am creating these scores. She needs the chord symbols next to what she's playing, rather than the vocal line. But I agree with what you're saying 100%. Thank you so much for your help!
In reply to Marc, in general, thank you… by Lets Rock
Would she be OK with simply reversing the order of the staves, then, so the piano is on top? Or even removing the vocal line?
In reply to Would she be OK with simply… by Marc Sabatella
I do usually remove the vocal line by creating a Part just for her. I think my question relates more to having a "normal" score avoid the collisions between Lyrics and Chords.
In reply to I do usually remove the… by Lets Rock
In which case, my advice stands - a normal score does it by putting the chords above the vocal staff, in part for this exact reason. But the other methods I suggested should also work to have an "abnormal" vocal+piano score also avoid collisions.