Restricting system to 4 bars per line?

• Feb 20, 2015 - 14:32

I've used Musescore v2 beta for a month now, and like it with one big exception. I constantly have problems retaining a 4-bar-per-line requirement. After selecting everything, I go into "style-general-system" and make sure that I have fixed number of measures/system = 4, but this doesn't always produce 4 bars per line. Case in point: there is a musescore sheet music score for Zappa's "Watermelon in easter hay"; I wanted to change some of the notes, but doing so changes the 4 bars per line to two, despite having previously set the 'system' setting to 4 bars per line.

What's the problem and is there a fix?

Thanks for the help,

Bob

Comments

• Feb 20, 2015 - 14:48

Can't know without seeing the score, but two things:

* Setting this feature to 4 bars per line means that _no more_ that 4 will be on aline, it can be less if the measures are too full.

* This feature was recently removed as it caused too many problems. You will have to use "line breaks" now (from the palette)

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• Feb 20, 2015 - 15:01

Thank you for the quick reply. You asked about the score: it's in the 'sheet music' section, as:
http://musescore.com/user/104825/scores/117823. I moved the underlying 9-note guitar groove up a third in the first four bars. Nothing else, but this change caused 2-bars per line. How do I prevent this?

I'll search for info on 'line breaks', but would appreciate some quick help. How is it used?

Thank you once again.

Bob

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• Feb 20, 2015 - 15:11

Transposing up a third may have added accidentals or caused notes to collide with notes in other voices, which caused measures to get wider. Presumably there is simply too much there to fit four measures on a line given you current settings for staff size, minimum distance between notes, spacing factor, etc. So you need to change one of those. Eaisest usually is to reduce the "stretch" of the affected measure, thus moving the notes closer together than they would normally be given your settings in Style / General / Measure / Spacing. If that results in the music being too dense, you'll probably wan to either reduce staff size (Layout / Page Settings) or just given up on forcing music that complex to have four measures per line.

Line breaks are added from the Breaks & Spacer palette, or by selecting a barline and hitting Enter. They work pretty much exactly like line breaks in a text editor. You can also have added every four bars automatically via Edit / Tools / Add/Remove Line Breaks.

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• Feb 20, 2015 - 15:22

As schepers stated you probably should use "Line Breaks" . They are in the Palette under "Breaks and Spacers". Also, I have found that "Page Setting" has an effect on this type of issue. Lowering the "Scaling" might help. Most importantly, I have found that using "Fixed Measure Width" is not good. For me anyway. It limits what you can do with a measure. I would turn that feature off, apply line breaks and then shrink the measures, using the shift and bracket keys to get your four measures per stave.
Being an intermediate user, I'm aware there may be an alternate method.

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