To change spacing between staves

• Feb 21, 2023 - 16:14

How do I change the spacing in between the staves? There is too much space there and I want to be able to move them closer together.

Attachment Size
Memory Eternal.mscz 24.18 KB

Comments

In reply to by SteveBlower

hat is not a good idea. It was a hack some people resorted to in order to workaround a bug in MuseScore 3, but it makes the layout worse in all other respects - there were always better ways of working around the bug even in MuseScore. And in any event, the bug that this hack worked around is no longer present in MuseScore 4. So there is no longer any reason to mess up the layout of your score by employing this hack.

The bug was, the max system distance was being ignored with justification on, so disabling justification was the only way to get max system distance to be honored. but disabling justification is a terrible idea in general. If you really want a lower max system distance, simply reduce it normally - it is no longer ignored. Thewn you can have your cake and eat it too.

So again, to compress the space between systems without messing up the overall layout of your score, simply reduce max system distance (and, depending don't he specifics, possibly max staff distance as well). Or reduce max page fill. Disabling vertical justification was never a good workaround for the MU3, and now it's definitely no longer needed since the bug is fixed.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I am in MuseScore 4 and my sheet has just one system on page 3. Everybody I know prefers to limit them to 2 pages. So I clobbered all the line breaks. Tried disabling justification (didn't work anyway,) and put it back on and instead started hatcheting away at Max Staff distance and a bunch of those other settings as described in here. It doesn't seem to be doing anything. What can I do to make this fit on 2 pages? Thanks!

Attachment Size
Começar De Novo.mscz 55.14 KB

In reply to by Tixrus

You shouldn't be messing with justification or staff distances. The reason this doesn't fit is that it really is just too much music for two pages given the lyrics. Reducing the lyrics bottom margin in Format / Style / Lyrics will help a little, and also you've got a couple places where the chord symbols are riding pretty high because of the kicks above the staff and because they are overlapping so you'll want to tweak those. But mostly, you're just going need smaller staff size (and everytjing else scales with it). So after making those other adjustments, reduce staff space size in Format / Page settings, and it will fit.

But basically, you're looking at it backwards. You're thinking it doesn't fit on two pages because the staff distances are too large, but it's the other way around - MuseScore is increasing the staff distances to fill the pages better because because it isn't going to fit on two pages until you make those changes. Or more particular, once MuseScore determines how many systems can fit on a pagel it adds space to fill the page better. There is a lot of space because there isn't room for another system given your current lyrics margin and staff size settings.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

OK thanks. This is really a PDF reader issue. Yes indeed it's a squeeze to get all that in there with the lyrics. Smaller staff size it is. (Try to avoid that as well because us old jazzers have crappy vision too, especially with bifocals and face pretty much glued to a mic.) Hoping some day to have a way to scroll PDF music with the beat and make what you need to see RIGHT NOW HUGE. A friend of mine has a PDF reader that does that, I might have to look into it. Compromises, compromises. ;)

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