System Alignment Across Pages

[Michael Betz]

I have written a piano piece that occasionally adds a staff in addition to the grand staff for percussion effects. I would like the systems to be aligned on each page as is common in most books of piano scores: there are generally the same amount of systems on each page, and they are horizontally aligned with each other. When this is not possible (when another staff is added), the top of the top systems and the bottom of the bottom systems are horizontally aligned on each opposing page. I am wondering what the most effective method would be to do this on Finale.

I have been using some form of finale for at least five years, so I am familiar with the Page Layout => Space Systems Evenly function and other such things, but this does not work as I would like it to, because the margins on each of my systems are unfortunately not equal. I suppose I need a way to even those up, also. My primary problem with Finale in general is making my final product look the way I want it to.

I am running Finale 2008a. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Peter Thomsen]

1) Take a look at the attached graphic "PageLayout.jpg", created 3 years ago by Finale user Doug Blackmore.
The graphic explains how the different margins are scaled.



2) Attached is a .mus document (Aligned systems 2008.mus) with a simple solution that does, what you want.
To make the layout calculations easier, the example only uses Page Scaling.
System Scaling and Staff Scaling are set to 100 %.

The first system displays all the staves, even if some of the staves are empty.
This is common practice for a score layout.

In the other systems the Percussion staff is optimized away where it isn't in use.
Where the Percussion staff is optimized away, the systems are perfectly aligned between pages.
This is accomplished by giving all the systems the same margin values in the dialog box Edit System Margins.
These margin values are also used if more systems are added to the document (See Document menu > Page Format > Score...).

On all pages where the Percussion staff is visible, the systems are spaced evenly on the page from top to bottom.
This is accomplished by giving all the systems on that particular page a higher value for "Distance Between Systems" so that the amount "Required for additional system:" is as small as possible.

Tip:
For layout calculations like these it's easier if you use small Measurement Units, like Points or EVPUs (See the sub-menu "Measurement Units").

[Michael Betz]

Thank you very much, Peter. I still need to fiddle around with the measurements a little, but my score is already looking a lot better.