Misplaced/Offset Staves Issue in Parts

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harrisonjcollins
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:16 am
Sibelius Version: 2020.3
Operating System: Mac

Post by harrisonjcollins » Mon Nov 22, 2021 7:28 am

Hi all,

I'm formatting parts for a large project and have run into an issue I've dealt with quite a few times before and have never been sure how to fix. Occasionally, seemingly random parts' staves and attached text will be moved father down on the page than the typical placement for these objects, and Sibelius treats this as the correct and standard place for them to be as it does when they are actually in the correct place. I can drag the staves up but only a little bit before it stops me - not enough to put it back in the correct place. See the examples below: the piccolo part looks correct, while the percussion 7 part is suffering from the misplacement issue. Note that the instrument name header and piece title headers stay attached to the top of the page, and are not affected by this issue.
Ex. 1, correct.png
Ex. 1, correct.png (206.88 KiB) Viewed 1424 times
Ex. 2, incorrect-misplaced.png
Ex. 2, incorrect-misplaced.png (158.34 KiB) Viewed 1424 times
My only work-around for it is to use the "Copy Part Layout" feature to re-format the parts to a part that has staves in the correct place, but the drawback of that is that then I have to manually fix the part that now is formatted to a usually quite-different part I copied. I can delete the part from the score and add the instrument back and the issue will still be present. My question is this: what in the world is going on here, and how can I fix this? It makes it essentially impossible to format a professional-looking part. I'd love to figure out how to prevent it in the first place and make my work more efficient.

Note: I haven't noticed a particular trend with this before, but I did notice one this time: this project is a wind ensemble piece, and all staves other than the woodwinds (and, in terms of location, below the woodwinds) had this issue - the brass, double bass, piano, and percussion. Not sure if that helps at all but I thought I'd share.

Thanks in advance for your time and consideration!


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 Nov 22, 2021 9:10 am

There are several things that cause problems like this:

1. The individual part document settings are incorrect
2. the staff size is slightly different
3. There are hidden staves (usually for ossias or instrument changes) that are freaking out the layout

When you set up the parts, do you use Parts-->Part appearance-->All parts to do the initial setup?
After having done this, do you then create new parts? They will take on the old default parameters.

To avoid, you need to create a MSS paper and/or house style that contains not only your main score document setup, but also the individual setup for the parts. In the past, I have found this whole process tedious in the extreme - especially if you don't write for the same size ensemble all the time (who does?) IMO, this is one of the many shortfalls in Sib that the team should be working on instead of peeing about with the stupid toys. Stuff like this doesn't happen in Dorico, that's for sure.

Just a thought, but you could complain about this on the OFFICIAL avid sibelius website here: https://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpce ... &groupid=3
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

harrisonjcollins
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:16 am
Sibelius Version: 2020.3
Operating System: Mac

Post by harrisonjcollins » Mon Nov 22, 2021 6:36 pm

Mike, you are a true lifesaver. I went into part layout to find that, for some reason, the staff margins were just completely different. I set all parts to have the margins of the correct piccolo part and that fixed it right up. Thank you so much for your help! I may drop a line on the official website to bring up that issue as well.

I sympathize with your frustration. Sometimes it seems like I've got a bit of Stockholm Syndrome for Sibelius. I've had many colleagues sing the praises of Dorico, telling me how they'd never go back to Sibelius. Maybe I'll get there one day.

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