Reducing/Enlarging

You can enlarge or reduce almost any element of your music: a notehead, an entire note, a staff, a system, or a page. The limits of the Resize tool icon are 10% to 1000%.

See Note size and Cue notes.

See the Document Options - Chords dialog box and Change Chord Assignments dialog box.

You must be in Page View to reduce or enlarge a staff or system.

  1. Choose the Resize tool icon.
  2. Click on a staff (to resize the staff), or between any two staves in a system (to resize the system). Right-click to choose the element you would like to resize from a context menu. The Resize Staff dialog box or Resize Staff System dialog box appears, asking you how you want to resize the staff or system.
    • Click Hold Margins if you intend to reduce the music itself but not the system margins, thus increasing the number of measures that fit on the line.
    • Click Resize Vertical Space if, in reducing a system, you want less space between this system and the next, proportional to the reduction.
    • Staff Sizing can be very useful for calculating the combined scaling of staff and system. This can help avoid the necessity of resizing the page and scaling text blocks. Note that the absolute staff height is 96 EVPUs or .3333 inches or .8467 cm.
  3. Enter the desired reduction or enlargement percentage. Specify the range of systems you want to affect. Click OK. If you reduced or enlarged a system with Hold Margins selected, the measure widths will appear to be uneven.
  4. Choose Utilities > Update Layout. To restore a staff or system to its original size, click on the staff or system with the Resize tool. Enter 100 (%) and click OK.

Use this technique for reducing or enlarging the printed size of the music itself, including text and expressions (without changing the actual page size). You must be in Page View to reduce or enlarge a page.

  1. Choose the Resize tool icon.
  2. Click the upper-left corner of the first page you want to resize. Or, right-click and choose Resize Page. The Resize Page dialog box appears.
  3. Enter the reduction or enlargement percentage. Click Hold Margins, too, unless you want the entire printed page to shrink (or grow) proportionally. (See Resize Staff System dialog box for details.)
  4. Specify the pages you want to resize.
  5. Click OK. As always, whenever you perform an operation that changes the measure widths, you should update the measure layout.
  6. Choose Utilities > Update Layout.

When you shrink notes, Finale automatically shrinks anything attached to them proportionally—lyrics, chord symbols, articulations, expressions, and so on. Under some circumstances, you may not want these attached items to change size along with the notes.

Noteman says: For lyrics, a simpler alternative to this method is to specify a Fixed Size when you select a type size. For chords, a simpler alternative is to specify a Fixed Size in the Document Options - Fonts dialog box.

  1. Open the Selection dialog box that contains the entry you would like to remain a Fixed Size. For example, for an expression, choose the Expression tool icon and double-click a note to display the Expression Selection dialog box.
  2. Select the item in the list that you wish to remain a Fixed Size and choose Edit.
  3. Choose Set Font. The Font dialog box appears.
  4. Select Fixed Size. This will prevent your item from shrinking when you use the Resize tool.
  5. Click OK twice.