Working with staves and systems

Fitting systems on pages.

A line of music across a page, whether it’s made up of one instrument or multiple, is called a system. Adjusting the size of your systems, and how many appear on a page, allows you to make the most of your available printing space.

By the end of this lesson you will know how to:

1. Adjust the space between staves
2. Adjust the system spacing and number of systems per page

Note. To begin at this point, open "Tutorial 7a.MUS."

Spacing staves

One way you can make your finished score more efficient is to remove staves that don’t have music in them. In the music you’ve created, the clarinet doesn’t play until measure 9, resulting in eight empty measures printed in the score.

To move a staff up or down in a system:

1. Select the Staff tool .
2. Click the handle on the top Piano staff, first system, and drag down a bit. Notice the spacing between subsequent staves does not change.
3. Do the same for the top piano staff in the second system.

We just changed the spacing for individual systems. You can also adjust the staff spacing for all systems at once. For example, lets say you wanted to lower the Clarinet staff from the third system to the end of the piece.

To move a staff up or down for all systems:

1. Double-click the handle on the Clarinet staff in measure 7. All measures are now highlighted in the Clarinet staff.
2. Drag the staff down (to about1.11"). Notice the spacing changes in all systems.

Fitting systems on pages

SongWriter allows you to drag systems to adjust their spacing manually. You can move them while leaving the spacing of subsequent systems uniform, or move them independently. You can also use the Resize tool to adjust the overall size of the music in order to fit more systems on a page.

To reposition systems and finalize the layout:

1. Click the handle on the upper left corner of the top staff and drag it down a bit. This handle doubles as the top system margin for the first system. 
2. Choose the Page Layout Tool . Click the top system and drag down a bit. Notice subsequent systems adjust accordingly. You cal also drag a system independently...
3. Hold down OPTION and then click and drag the top system down. The second system remains at the same position.
4. Choose the Resize tool .
5. Click the upper left corner of the page.
6. For Reset Size To, enter "80" and click OK. You music is resized so two systems appear on each page.
7. You may notice a single rogue measure taking up a whole system on the last page. To move this to the previous page (and remove the last page altogether), simply move the measure to the previous system. Choose the Selection tool , select the last measure, and press UP ARROW.

Use the above techniques to manually position systems visually. To specify a number of systems per page automatically, choose Page Layout > Space Systems Evenly, and then enter the number of systems in the Distribute Systems section and click OK. For additional control over the precise spacing of system and page margins, see Page Layout.

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