Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Getting bars to line up (Read 5671 times) previous topic - next topic

Getting bars to line up

I am having trouble getting my bar lines to line up on sheet music with more than one staff. The first few measures are fine, but then they start getting just a little bit off. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks,
ALisha

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #2 –
Yes, this is a great way to check yourself. If barlines do not line up, you are missing beats somewhere. I also use Finale, and though it warns you if you have too many beats in a measure, if you have too few... you may not notice.

So, look for a missing note or rest.

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #3 –
I solve this problem by creating a new "dummy" staff at the bottom. I then simply enter time signature and create one bar with the appropriate number of quarter notes to fill it, add a bar line, and copy that bar ad nauseum. I then use the staff properties feature (F2) to set all staves to upper and lower grand staff. This causes the bar lines to extend up and down to the next staff, and can always be changed to a different style when you finish the input. I now have a visual check on whether or not I've entered the right number of notes/rests into each bar. The moment you miss, the bar lines stop lining up.

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #4 –
ummm, I read somewhere that one of the rules is that bars should NOT line up with following staves. (can someone confirm? otherwise I'll find the book where I read it) the reason is to improve sight-reading. If at a glance all the bar lines look the same, then it is so easy to start reading the same or the wrong staff when the musician looks back at the music. I know this is so true from experience
ie.
| . , . , | . , . , | . , . , | . , . , |
| . , . , | . , . , | . , . , | . , . , |
| . , . , | . , . , | . , . , | . , . , |
it's better if it goes:
| . , .. | . , . , | . , ., | . , . , |
| . , . , | . , . , | . , . , | . , . , |
| . ,., | . , . . | . , . ,|. , . , |
if you know what I mean.
Don't align the bars just so it looks perfect as in the process you frustrate a musician who tries to play it

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #5 –
Well, actually, as a musician, I prefer it if the beats (and thus the bar lines) line up -- it makes it easier for me to see how my part falls in with all of the others.

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #6 –
"Aver Idge" wrote:
>>>bars should NOT line up with following staves.<<<

I can't believe this is true. All the notation references I've ever seen insist that notes and rests should be carefully aligned with those on surrounding staves so that the relative timing of events is immediately clear. So, for example, if one staff had 2 half-notes and the one below it had a four quarters, the second half note on the top staff should be placed immediately above the third quarter on the lower staff, making it immediately clear that they occur at the same time. This practice would naturally lead to aligned bar lines.

I can almost imagine "don't-line-up-bar-lines" as a rule of thumb for neighboring *systems*, but I've never actually heard of this before.

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #7 –
It seems that the "don't line up bar lines with surrounding staves" poster was referring to different systems on the same page, not different staves within the same system.

- seb

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #8 –
Okay, so if we DO want to align the bar lines on all systems for printing, what does it take to do it?

If I have a (short) song with (for example) 24 measures, and I want three measures on each system, with four systems on each page, two pages total, how can I convince NoteWorthy to align the bar lines from system to system?

Right now, print preview is putting three measures on some systems, but putting five measures on some systems and then s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g two measures over other systems... which just doesn't look great.

Oddly enough, it seems that the measures that contain *more* notes (eighths and sixteenths) are the ones that Noteworthy ends up making *shorter*... and the measures with a whole note or two half notes get stretched.

Thoughts?

--Taylor

Re: Getting bars to line up

Reply #9 –
Haven't tried this myself, but this should work, if your only concern is how it looks, not how it plays:

Enter your music as successive staves in a multi-staff system. For instance, if you have a single vocal line with piano accompaniment you want to print, enter it as 12 systems. The first line would be staves 1-3, the second line 4-6, etc. The barlines will always line up under these conditions.

You'll have to suppress printing of clefs and time signatures on the lower systems. If you explicitly specify a clef and time signature on each subsequent "pseudo-system" (i.e. every 3 bars) then set the visibility attribute to "never", that should take care of this aspect.

HTH, let us know how it goes.

Fred