On 4-May-07, at 9:24 AM, Marcello Noia wrote:
I'm making some SATTBB arrangements. The systems get too close if
put three per page, too distant if put two per page, the system
spacing command gets the first attached to the top margin and the
second attached to the bottom margin leaving a big hole in the
center, if I make the system optimized and "touch" the top system
of the page to get it down, the bottom one gets moved to the next
page, I'm getting really mad.
Which are the steps that you Finale "gurus" make to get things
settled the way you want and not the way Finale wants?
Well, I'm not really a guru, but I have some methods that I use.
For me, the way to get these large systems to fit is a combination of
1) system reduction
2) spacing between the staves
3) spacing between the systems
I try to get the reduction about the right size using the percent
tool. It has four different ways it operates. If you click a note, it
changes the note size, click a staff to change the staff size, click
between two staves on the same system to change the size of ALL the
staves (this is the one you want), and click in the page margin to
change the page size.
Then in the staff tool I drag the staves up and down to get the
spacing between them as tight as is comfortable. One trick here is
that if you have applied optimisation, then you get TWO handles to
drag with, the top handle as usual affects the distance for ALL
systems; whereas the bottom handle only affects the spacing for THIS
system. If you haven't optimised, you only get the one handle that
affects ALL systems. For the average choral work, I don't need to
change staff spacing from system to system, but if I have verse 2 in
some systems and not in others, then I will need different staff
spacings.
Then to the page layout tool. I open Edit System Margins, because I
can apply changes to all systems easily with this window open. I do
page 1 first, as the titles usually make this page special. I don't
worry about small differences in staff size for page 1, which might
be a little smaller (if I cram 3 systems into page 1) or a little
bigger (if I only put two).
Then I move on to page 2. I get everything looking the way I like by
dragging the systems around, then I go to the Edit System Margins
window. I apply to all the following systems by making the range
"System 3 to (blank)" which will go to the end of the piece. The
important measurement for me here is Distance Between Systems. I
usually set my top and bottom system margins to be big enough so that
I won't normally get the notes with ledger lines or lyrics colliding
with the page titles, so that I only have to worry about the space
between them. I try a few different values here. This is fussy work.
I might go back and adjust the system reduction again, if necessary.
This affects music spacing (everything gets bigger or smaller, so I
might get collisions!) which is why I start out by making this about
the right value. I don't bother with Finale's "Space Systems Evenly"
command, nor with the vertical collision avoidance plugin, as it
gives results that are too rough for me, and I end up doing it
manually anyway.
Jari Williamson's System Spacing plugin was fantastic for this; much
better than the Finale one.
Christopher
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