Music spacing
Music spacing is automatically applied when you enter music into PrintMusic. However, if you decide to turn off Automatic Music Spacing, the spacing is linear; in other words, a whole note gets exactly the same horizontal space as four quarter notes. Furthermore, this newly-entered music may contain collisions between lyric syllables, overlapping chord symbols, and crowded 32nd notes.
Choose Edit > Automatic Music Spacing. When the checkmark is not shown, Automatic Music Spacing is not enabled. Choose the menu item again to turn it back on.
- Choose the Selection tool
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- Select the music you want to respace.
In general, you’ll want to select all the staves in a system. If you select only one staff, for example, you could get unexpected results, because the respacing command sets the measure widths for all staves according to the spacing of the selected region. Thus, if you select and respace measure 1 in the flute staff, which contains only a whole note, the running eighth notes in another staff’s measure 1 will be compressed and overlapping.
- Choose Utilities > Apply Music Spacing. This command may take time. But when the truck cursor disappears, you’ll find that your music has been carefully respaced.
If Automatic Update Layout is not checked, the final step is extremely important:
- Choose Utilities > Update Layout. The Music Spacing command is responsible for laying out the notes within each measure. In doing so, PrintMusic adjusts the widths of the selected measures, and they may no longer fit neatly into one line of music across the page. The Update Layout command is responsible for laying out the measures across the page; it justifies the measures with the page margins.
If you don’t choose Update Layout after respacing your music, you may find measures at the ends of systems in Page View that seem much too wide or too narrow. (Choosing Update Layout will solve the problem immediately.)
Note: When PrintMusic spaces the notes of your score, it widens the selected measures as necessary to make room for lyrics, if any.
