Adjusting the width of measures
I am using Musescore 3 and I cannot find how to adjust the width of measures.
I am preparing a score with lyrics, which has seven staves. Five staves have four or five measures but one has two and the other has just one over-stretched measure.
The stretch facility in the Format menu doesn’t correct this annoying problem.
Any help would be appreciated.
Comments
Measures expand to accommodate the notes or rests or lyrics that you enter. If there are few notes, rests or lyrics in the measures you can have more narrower measures on a system than if there are many notes, rests or lyrics. If measures don't fit on a system, Musescore wraps the measures that don't fit onto the next measure. You can force Musescore to wrap measures onto the next stave by adding a system break in the measure before you want the wrap to occur. So if you have a single measure or just a few measures on a system at the end of the score, force some of the measures from the previous system to wrap onto that final system by adding a system break. You may then want to do the same on the next previous system until you get a layout that pleases you.
You can accommodate more measures on a system by using a larger page size, reducing the size of the margins or by scaling everything to be smaller on the page.
You can also adjust the spacing of notes to allow the music to be more cramped (not recommended) by reducing the minimum note distance in Format>Style>Measure or, if you have many short duration notes, by reducing the spacing ratio - also in Format>Style>Measure.
Also note that it is best to finish entering all the music before starting to adjust the layout.
For more specific help, please attach the score you are having difficulty with.
In reply to Measures expand to… by SteveBlower
Thanks Steve, I am not finding this subject easy to understand, but I attach a copy of my score which shows measures 4, 22 & 23 over-stretched.
In reply to Thanks Steve, I am not… by Geoff-22
"please attach the score" - i.e. the .MSCZ file, so that others can look at the file and see what they can do to help.
In reply to Thanks Steve, I am not… by Geoff-22
It would be much easier to help if you attached the score, the .mscz file. Then we can see what settings you have used. But from that picture it looks like you have a system break on measure 4. It looks like a grey box with a bent arrow in it. Select it and delete it. and the following measures will move back to the second system.
See https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/systems-and-horizontal-spacing
In fact, read that whole section of the handbook https://musescore.org/en/handbook/4/systems-and-horizontal-spacing
In reply to It would be much easier to… by SteveBlower
Thanks for your help. I have deleted the 'system break' arrows, (I didn't know what they were and what they did), and my stretched measures have now been corrected.
In reply to Thanks for your help. I have… by Geoff-22
It's simply a stave break - much like the text break in word processing software. You should really only apply it when the score is finished to make it look nicer.