Changing Vertical Spacing Between Staves and Systems

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Changing Vertical Spacing Between Staves and Systems

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In general, Musician does a good job of vertically spacing staves within systems, and systems on a page, to evenly distribute space according to standard music engraving practices. There may be reasons, however, that you will want to override Musician's default vertical spacing of staves and systems.

Musician offers the following ways to change the relative spacing of staves and systems on a page:

B816Move a single staff up or down, relative to the position of the adjacent staves in the same system.
B816Move an entire system up or down, relative to the position of adjacent systems on the same page.
B816Stretch or compress the height of a system, so that staves within that system are evenly spread out or compressed together.

prcarrow To change the vertical spacing between staves and systems:

1.Navigate to the Page Layout palette.

-- OR --

Type SHIFT+P. If this takes you to the Page Text Palette instead, type SHIFT+P a second time to go to the Page Layout Palette.

Musician will display the score in Page Layout View.

2.Click the Move Barlines and Staves PageLayoutSpringsButton button in the Page Layout Palette.

-- OR --

If you are not already in Select Mode, click the changing_vertical_spaici1 button in the main toolbar.

-- OR --

hit the ENTER key.

-- OR --

Right-click the mouse anywhere on the page.

3.Click one of the system or staff handles, and while holding down the left mouse button, drag the handle of the system's or staff's vertical position, or the height of the system.

PageLayoutVerticalSpacing

After you have moved a system or staff, or stretched a system, the handle will be filled with a solid color, as illustrated here:

PageLayoutVerticalSpacingAfter

prcarrow To restore a staff's or system's vertical position, or a system's vertical stretch, to the default:

1.Enter Page Layout view, as above.
2.Enter Select Mode by clicking the Select Mode changing_vertical_spaici2 button in the main toolbar, or by hitting the ENTER key, or by right-clicking the mouse anywhere on the page.
3.Select the staff's or system's handle by clicking it.

The staff or system, and its handle, will be highlighted in blue:

PageLayoutSystemStretchHandleSelected

4.Hit the DEL key.

-- OR --

Click the Default PageLayoutDefaultButton button.

This restores the staff or system to its default vertical position, or the system to its default vertical stretch.