Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Change the widge of measures? (Read 4170 times) previous topic - next topic

Change the widge of measures?

Hello!  I was wondering if there is a way to make it so that all measures are roughly of equal length (regardless of how many notes are in them).  I have some passages with lots of 8th, 16th, 32nd notes, etc.  Is there a way I can get them to squish down visually to add a bit more consistency to my score?  Someone who plays in an orchestra is reviewing my scores and told me that it can be confusing for players when the note spacing is like this.  This is what he said:

"See on the first page how rhythms aren't spaced proportionately to their length? While, of course, players read rhythms, rather than spacing, to work out rhythms, it helps immeasurably with sight-reading."

I must admit, it is frustrating when I'm printing the scores and a percussion staff with lots of smaller notes makes it so that only two bars can be printed on one page at a time!  Thanks in advance for your time!

Rebecca

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #1 –
Hi Rebecca,
you basically have 2 options to play with here:
1) in |File|Page Setup|Options (tab)| you have a check box for "Increase spacing for longer notes".  By default it is checked.
This option tries to setup a proportional spacing for notes so that longer notes are assigned more horizontal space.  Generally I choose to leave this on as I like the visual aide that greater spacing gives.

If you turn it off, all notes consume the same horizontal space.

2) Using the "spacer" ( <Ins> ) you can reduce, and ultimately increase the spacing between any two objects on a staff.  Multiple <Ins> presses lengthens the space consumed.  If you have multi staff systems and you want to reduce space you'll find you need to use this at the same point on all staves in the system or the staves you don't use it on will still affect the overall spacing and it won't reduce.

Note that the spacer can be used regardless of whether "Increase spacing for longer notes" is checked or not.

I am aware that at least one active user on this forum (RickG) chooses to work with "Increase spacing..." unchecked.

For your problem with the drum staff, perhaps you could use hidden staves for the sound, and a visible staff with bar repeat symbols for each repetitive patterned bar to reduce the space each bar takes up.  This symbol is available as a text object in all of my *Dings font suites.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Lawrie Pardy –
For your problem with the drum staff, perhaps you could use hidden staves for the sound, and a visible staff with bar repeat symbols for each repetitive patterned bar to reduce the space each bar takes up.  This symbol is available as a text object in all of my *Dings font suites.
There is also an object plugin that can create the repeat marks.

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #3 –
Ahh, thanks Mike.  I thought there might be one but couldn't remember for sure.

Definitely a better option than a text symbol.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #4 –
Really, all I want to do is squish down the width of the longer measures!  Is there a way I can do that, per chance?  :O

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: RebeccaETripp –
Really, all I want to do is squish down the width of the longer measures!  Is there a way I can do that, per chance?  :O
Yup, use the spacer object.

Position the cursor where you want to remove space and press the <Ins> key once.  If that is too small a space then press <Ins> again.

HOWEVER, if space is being taken on another visible staff in the system then the spacer object won't have any effect unless you also place one in the other staff.

Best to experiment a little with just one, then two staves and see how they interact.

Enough presses of the <Ins> key will ultimately start taking up MORE space rather than less.  You can adjust the space taken by highlighting the spacer object and pressing <Alt+Enter> and editing the properties in the ensuing dialogue box.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #6 –
Thanks for your help, Lawrie.  I think there's something I'm not understanding here.  I tried that, but all it does (seemingly no matter how I configure it) is make the measures wider!  I really want to find a way to make them narrower.  So, for example, if I have one bar with nothing but 16th notes followed by a bar with two half notes, they'll both be the exact same width on a printed version.

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #7 –
Perhaps this example can help.  There are 2 staves in the system.  "staff" uses a single spacer after each note in the SECOND of each pair of bars to show the difference a spacer can make.

By going to |Page Setup|Contents| and making "staff-1" visible, you can see the effect that not having equivalent spacers in other staves in the system can have on the staff that does use spacers.

Now make staff-2 visible and staff-1 invisible and see the effect of having equivalent spacers.

This is a very simplistic example and real world won't be this straight forward most of the time.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #8 –
Just 4 "concept teaching examples"; and a "narrowing notes example" - maybe they also help you to see what NWC does with spacers.

H.M.

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #9 –
Oh, wow!  Thank you so much!  ^_^  I'm not sure what I was doing wrong before but I have it now!  I really appreciate it!

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #10 –
Well... I've been up all night and it's 3 AM, doing this one note at a time for 30 minutes of music.  Is there any way to automate the spacer where I can just highlight a chunk of measures and they will automatically get compressed down?  I couldn't find anything like that in the user tool and there is just so, so much music to get through by the end of the week.
 

Re: Change the widge of measures?

Reply #11 –
This might help: Spacer.htm
Since 1998