Adjusting system distances non-mathematically? :?)
(re MS v3.6)
Hi guys,
I wanted to move a system closer to the preceding one, but dragging it had no effect. I thought this might be a way to keep people from inadvertently moving staves up/down while editing. Another way I’ve seen it done is by dragging the beginning or end of a staff up/down (making a control box appear in those places), but that didn’t work either.
To make it a bit more confusing, when I clicked an empty place in a bar to selected, then tried dragging it, the 4-headed "drag" arrow pointer appeared, creating the impression I'd be able to drag the selected system up or down. (When an item's selected, it’s a Windows GUI standard for the “drag” pointer to appear only when the selected item is draggable—not the whole page.)
I consulted the Handbook, but couldn’t find anything about changing spacing between specific systems, only ALL of them. The closest thing I could find was in “Lines> Adjust vertical position”:
> In Normal mode, apply one of the following methods:
> Click on one or more lines and change the vertical offset in the Inspector;
> Click on a line, press and hold Shift and drag it up/down with a mouse.
But neither of these applied to systems.
If you can Shift-drag lines this way, wouldn't it be reasonable enough to allow one to do this with the actual music—changing the mouse pointer to an “up/down” arrow when the user held Shift while hovering over a selected bar?
I still don’t know how to do it. Is it actually necessary to open a dialog box to change something like that, in decimal values, rather than clicking and dragging—you know, sort of why mouses were made? (LOL) Thanks!
Comments
Use a fixed spacer and reduce its lenght, see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/breaks-and-spacers
Generally speaking, if there is a system you want closer to other systems than the default calculation computer according to your current settings, there's a reason you want that change, and adjusting the setting sis a far more precise and consistent way of doing it (eg, other systems would be changed in the same way automatically. So, best to attach your actual score and explain in more detail what the goal is,. "Eyeballing" these sorts of adjustments with spacers is possible but tends to lead to unprofessional-looking results and is not often recommended except for special cases not easily handled by simple settings changes.
In reply to Generally speaking, if there… by Marc Sabatella
Wow, Marc, I couldn't disagree more.
Every page of music is different. Every line of music, and how it's spacially related to the lines around it, is different. Thus creating a legible, balanced, beautiful page of music is more than a formula, IMHO; it's a kind of visual art.
I often see scores (for example, on Musescore.org) with extra space between staves and systems that require the reader's eyes to jump unnecessary distances, or staves/systems that are too close to each other and create distraction.
You're no doubt familiar with the principle of kerning in proportional fonts (like this one). To look right, these characters can't be spaced a uniform distance from each other, because their shapes also leave certain spaces around them. So each proportional font has an embedded kerning table, created by its author, with the ideal horizontal spacing between every possible pair of characters (see "kerning" example).
That's how it is with staff/system spacing, too—depending on how many notes are above or below a staff, how far out they are, and where they occur in relation to outer notes on the staves above and below it.
That's why, after entering music, I always hand-adjust vertical spacing, to make the page balanced, beautiful and easy to read.
In Sibelius, I could do this by simply dragging an empty place in a bar to move that staff to move it closer to or father away from the staff above it—or the top staff of a system, to move the system as a unit (see "staff dragging" screenshot).
In MS, you must open the "Breaks & Spacers" toolbar, drag and drop one of three (!) types of spacer tools onto a staff; then click and drag the tool. I've been using MS for weeks now, and I still can't remember which tool is for what.
Their symbols and names seem unintuitive. For example, "Staff spacer up" is a horizontal line with an arrow pointing up from it—so you'd think it'd enable you to move a staff up, right? But no—it actually moves the staff down.
If you drop "Staff spacer down" on the top staff of a system, it moves not only that staff down, but widens the spacing between all of the system's staves—and so on.
Why must something so basic be so complicated? Why can't we just drag staves and systems where we want them?
My only guess is that MS's authors don't want staves/systems to be moved inadvertently—so they made it require these very deliberate, extra steps. But you must do this for every staff/system you want to adjust. It takes so much more time, and is so much more complicated.
If inadvertent moves are the concern, why not make staves/systems movable only by clicking and dragging one of the control boxes that appear when you click the junction of a barline and its top or bottom staff line? (Control boxes, traditionally used for moving/resizing objects, do appear in MS when you do this—but they don't seem to do anything. Or allow it only on when clicking a box on a staff's/system's first barline (see "MS control boxes" screenshot). That'd deter inadvertent moves, wouldn't it? What else are they worried about?
In reply to Wow, Marc, I couldn't… by Andy Fielding
As I said, if there is a specific case where you feel there is unusual special need for inconsistent distances, please attach the actual score so we can understand and assist better. But, if the goal is consistency - as it normally would be - imagine how awful it would be to need to drag hundreds of systems around across a longer score.
That said, sure, for the unusual special cases where inconsistent distances are desired for whatever reason, it's possible to shave a couple of seconds off the current method.
In reply to As I said, if there is a… by Marc Sabatella
Look, It's mostly about time.
MS is great—but if you want it to rise above the hobby level and start being adopted by professional composers/arrangers/copyists, it has to be easy to use, with minimum hoop-jumping.
Some scores are fine with uniform staff/system distances. But some have extensive ledger lines, slurs, and other staff objects that require staves/systems to be spaced according to the page to look good. (Piano music is a good example. When I see piano scores on MS's score-sharing site, frankly, their rigid vertical justification looks pretty template-y.)
Every notation program I've used for the last 20 years (Encore, Sibelius, Notion, Dorico) has allowed staves/systems to be moved by dragging, with no special "tools" required. If they didn't think it was a useful feature, they wouldn't have gone to the trouble to include it.
I understand the importance of locking lines in place by default to avoid inadvertent movement. But having to drag special "tools" onto the page each time you want to move one up or down (and having to remember which one does what—as they're apparently all different, for different circumstances?), or having to open dialog boxes and type in values... That's pretty distracting and time-consuming. (MS isn't trying to be like Finale, right? 😄)
There should at least be the option to move lines by dragging the (presently functionless, apparently) control boxes that already appear when you point to the top or bottom of a barline. It seems to me that's a pretty deliberate action anyway, with little chance it could be done inadventently. (And if it is, there's always Undo, right?)
As a technical writer / GUI consultant, I found that good developers were those who were receptive to user feedback—not those who felt obligated to explain to users why this or that feature idea wasn't necessary. That's more along the lines of telling people what sort of work they should do. Just saying. Cheers, A.
In reply to Look, It's mostly about time… by Andy Fielding
We're definitively receptive to feedback, and someday additional features may be provided. But meanwhile, I'm just trying to help you get the job done as efficiently as possible today, by helping you understand how to best take advantage of the tools already present. You might be surprised to find how powerful they actually are once you learn to use them to their full potential!
In reply to We're definitively receptive… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks, Marc! I'm not trying to be negative, just practical. Believe me, I understand how challenging it is to develop something as specialized as music notation software, and have nothing but admiration for MS and its community.
That said... Unless someone can show me how dragging multiple layout tools onto a page—depending on which staff or system you want to move, and how—can possibly be as quick or intuitive as simply dragging them where you want them, I guess I'll need to wait for a future MS version that lets us use those tantalizing, as-yet-functionless control boxes.
In reply to Thanks! And I'm not trying… by Andy Fielding
I agree that dragging a staff might be useful. But only in limited situations. Dragging in Sibelius does not always produce the desired results, nor move the staff you want. It can produce uneven space results page to page. You claim that each page of music is an art work unto itself. Personally, I need each page to be consistent with ever other page. Otherwise there is the danger of being unable to grasp the piece as a whole. But that may just stem from my dislike of scores that hide empty staves. Major publishers are likely to reset a score according to their own preferences.
I am curious about how you got the score in your second example, into MuseScore. You want to reduce the distance within the piano staff. Yet I am unable to import from, MXL or PDF, a score with similar spacing. MuseScore corrects it automatically. MuseScore won't let you write measures with excessive ledger lines that overlap above or below. It adjusts the whole score a bit to accommodate this kind of thing. Even with collision avoidance turned on, Sibelius won't always do the same. At least in 7.5.1. Being able to drag a staff could be useful, but in Sibelius it seems like something you have no choice but to have to do it.
All of which make little difference to me as a whole. But things like this help me lean more about notation software as a whole
In reply to Thanks! And I'm not trying… by Andy Fielding
As I said, if you attach a sample score and dddescribe more precisely what changes to the default layout you'd like to make, we're happy to help show you how to do it as efficiently as possible. Normally that would mean a couple of simple change to style settings that will do everything automatically, not painstakingly dragging systems around one by one. But for the systems where for whatever reason you do what to tweak further manually even after optimizing your style settings - and this definitely does happen - it shouldn't require multiple layout tools - just a simple spacer does the job, taking at most a second long than dragging directly. not sure what you mean about multiple tools; there are certainly multiple tools available for different purposes, but only one is needed for this purpose, not different ones depending on whatever.
So again, if post your score and describe in more detail what specifically you want to adjust, we're happy to help.= you achieve that result the most efficient way possible.