adjust number of staves per page

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clearvision
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:53 pm

Post by clearvision » Mon Jan 06, 2020 4:49 pm

Hi,
In this fairly basic looking part some measures are busier than others, others have text others don't. One page has 9 staves and everything from one staff touches the above and below staves and second page has 3 staves with a waste of space. I want to have a balanced number of staves on each page.
Tried optimizing staff spacing and it still looks terrible, so crammed its impossible to read for a musician. Tried engraving rules > spacing between staves and it doesn't seem to understand the command because the result is a totally uneven looking score, some staves end up being too far apart while others are still touching stems with dynamics of the above staff. Tried moving staves manually with Shift key and drag > doesn't want to drag lower than an inch or so which leaves me with still too crammed a space. Is there a way to drag staves as far as I want?
Sibelius 6, Win10

Thanks for your help


andyg
Posts: 1727
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:55 pm
Sibelius Version: 7.1.3 and 6.2
Operating System: Windows

Post by andyg » Mon Jan 06, 2020 6:28 pm

Don't drag staves if you can avoid it!! Usually a recipe for much heartache until you know what you're doing!

So right now - Select All, Unlock Format, Reset Space Above Staves, Reset Space Below Staves. That will let Sibelius flow the music itself and will usually do a pretty decent job of things. You can use Optimise if it helps.

That will be a good starting point. Don't try to put too many bars on a system or too many systems on a page or you'll end up back where you are now.

There are video tutorials on formatting on line and the topic has been discussed many, many times on the official Sibelius forum (this is a very unofficial one!) - https://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpce ... ?groupid=3

MikeLyons
Posts: 1631
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2016 7:20 pm
Sibelius Version: Ult. 2024.3.1/7.5
Operating System: Windows

Post by MikeLyons » Mon Jan 06, 2020 10:23 pm

Just a note - Optimize will do nothing if you haven't reset the space above/below. Also, if this is a file imported from outside sib, then the very first task is to unlock format to get rid of any format from whatever it was before impport (pdf/xml etc)
Sib 6.2, 7.5 and 2023.6, Windows 11, 32GB RAM, 16TB 7200RPM Storage, 2TB SSD, Note Performer 3.3.2, EWQLSO, EWQLSC, Harmony Assistant and some others. mike@mike-lyons.co.uk

clearvision
Posts: 23
Joined: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:53 pm

Post by clearvision » Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:29 pm

andyg wrote:
Mon Jan 06, 2020 6:28 pm
So right now - Select All, Unlock Format, Reset Space Above Staves, Reset Space Below Staves. That will let Sibelius flow the music itself and will usually do a pretty decent job of things. You can use Optimize if it helps.
All these do nothing to solve the problem I explained. After unlocking format resetting space and Optimizing, The music looks exactly the same, too crowded, stems from one staff touch the stems from staff above, text and dynamics are overlapping with music and so on. I need to tell Sibelius to move one or two staves from a crowded page onto the next page so there's more space between staves for dynamics and whatnot. Right now I have 9 staves with music so shrunk and overlapping text that is unreadable. So I have these 9 staves on one page and only 3 staves on the next. If I could move two staves from the 9 stave page to have 7 on one and 5 on the next page that would be what needs to happen. How do I do that?
If I drag the staves that will only create space between staves on the same page where there already IS empty space, like the 3 stave page. But it won't help anything to drag any of the 9 stave inside that page because there is no room on that page anyhow ... and it won't move them to the next page either. Hence the need for staff to be moved to the next page!! If I Optimize, there is nothing optimal about how this music looks, unless touching stems and unreadable text is optional. Can you please direct me to these many helpful videos and discussions that you mentioned exist on this specific issue because I could not find any.

You also mentioned not to put too many staves in one page. Well, it seems that is exactly what I am trying to tell Sibelius NOT to do but it does it automatically: putting too many staves in one page. How do I control that? How do I dictate how many staves should be in each specific page? How do I tell Sibelius how many bars should be in each staff, since you also mention not to put too many bars in one staff. That is something I would very much like to know how to do, but it seems very hard to figure out, not intuitive at all.
Thanks for any helpful suggestions!

andyg
Posts: 1727
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:55 pm
Sibelius Version: 7.1.3 and 6.2
Operating System: Windows

Post by andyg » Fri Apr 03, 2020 4:41 pm

It sounds like this score may have been imported from another app (or it's been created in Sibelius - very badly!), and that's what caused the problems, as the instructions I gave you should work on a normal score. If nothing's happening, it sounds like the score is not unlocked.

I still have a running version of Sib 6. If you like, email me the score and I'll see if I can sort out the problems.

andrew at andrew-gilbert dot com

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