Make bars of ident. size so the sheet looks more organized

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frunee
Posts: 120
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by frunee » Thu Sep 23, 2010 2:32 pm

I'm writing out kicks for a drum solo. Now as it is by default sibelius automatically adjusts the bar width so it matches the notes written (e.g. you have 1 bar full of notes and 3 with only pause then most likely the 1 bar will be wider).

That's good most times, but in my case I have only very few kicks here and there and that makes it very hard to read is the barlines are all over the place. It would be much better to have identical width and 4 bars in each row. Also would be much easier to get an idea how the kicks relate to each other (speaking of per 4 bars).

How can I do this?


Sebasian
Posts: 1476
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:46 pm

Post by Sebasian » Thu Sep 23, 2010 7:51 pm

frunee wrote:. . . to have identical width and 4 bars in each row . . .
You can set 4 bars per system with Layout > Autobreaks.

To make the bars approximately equal in width, you can fill an unused staff or hidden voice with low-value notes (e.g. semiquavers/sixteenths). Set this not to Play in the Playback pane of the Properties Window.

If you're using a separate staff for this, select the entire staff and use Edit > Hide or show to hide all the notes, then Layout > Hide empty staves to make the whole staff disappear.

frunee
Posts: 120
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by frunee » Fri Sep 24, 2010 6:54 am

Thanks Sebasian. This workaround works great.

Bastis
Posts: 60
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:29 am

Post by Bastis » Mon Sep 27, 2010 10:06 am

Fantastic Sebasian!

I've been convinced there wasn't a way to do this for a long time. You can't adjust bar size in Plug-ins, so I had pretty much given up on it, but this workaround changes that! It should even be pretty simple to make a plug-in to do it.

Bastis
Posts: 60
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:29 am

Post by Bastis » Mon Sep 27, 2010 12:07 pm

Hmmm, I was almost done with the plug-in when I realized that you can't hide empty staves in Plug-ins. I guess we can get pretty close by putting the notes in a different voice and hiding them though.

Edit:
Bah! Gave it my best shot, managed to add the notes in a different voice and hide them, but it looked like crap anyway. I guess I have to manually hide the staves until they let us do it using plug-ins.

Edit 2:

Here we go, this is the best I managed to do. It works, but it's a little slow. I think other users of this forum can make better and faster plug-ins, but this one does the trick.
Attachments
EvenBarWidth.plg.zip
Plug-in to make bar widths even in a system.
(1.19 KiB) Downloaded 411 times

frunee
Posts: 120
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2009 3:55 pm

Post by frunee » Sun May 27, 2012 10:02 pm

I think this should be a default option. Very strange there is no easy solution for this.


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