getting final layout right

[lynndavidnewton]

Latest Finale / Latest Mac

I'm finishing up an orchestral score of 135 measures, with
nothing left to do but tweak the layout.

A summary of my problem is that Update Layout is not
distributing things well. (Yes, system locks are off.)

Here are some details:

o I select All, run Music Spacing / Note Spacing
o I run Update Layout

I do this regularly while working on scores and never worry
at all about the final layout because I'll do that when the
content is done.

As an orchestral piece it's one system per page. The last
several pages look like this:

PAGE#/MEASURES on PAGE
14 9
15 9
16 8
17 8
18 9
19 2

Page 18 is one of the densest pages (big ending coming up),
and the final page is barely a sneeze. It goes | boo-BAP
ee-DAP barrr--- | OMP, where OMP is a quarter note stinger
on the last measure with a quarter and half rest to fill it
out. Looks ridiculous.

Maybe it's relevant that there is a tempo change at the
start of the next-to-last measure. (An accelerando for four
previous measures to a marking "Vivo (q=172)".

This music changes meter frequently. So it's not good to
specify so many measures per line and leave it at that,
making an adjustment or two along the way or at the end.
Number of beats and density are always factors.

This is not deep, complex post-Webern music. It's a dance
piece for a high school show orchestra. (Albeit in odd
meters that had the dancers tripping over themselves.)

And when I've ever tried to chop it up by locking systems,
it's gotten fouled up worse. (I'll try again while waiting
for suggestions.)

I don't care how many pages it comes out to (currently 19,
and I'd be happy to open it up).

Suggestions? The fix has got to be easy. Possibly one single
hard-coded page break in the middle would clear things up.

I'm mainly wondering either I don't about Finale's layout
algorithms or why it calculate things better.

Thanks to anyone who has read this far.

[BuonTempi]

(Yes, system locks are off.)

Why? I always lock the systems.

9+9+8+8+9+2 = 45 over 6 systems. So 7.5 (!) each.

Lock the systems, then 'knock' a measure or two over on to the next system using the down arrow.

[lynndavidnewton]

(Yes, system locks are off.)

Why? I always lock the systems.

9+9+8+8+9+2 = 45 over 6 systems. So 7.5 (!) each.

Lock the systems, then 'knock' a measure or two over on to the next system using the down arrow.

This is helpful, but perhaps I misunderstand locking.

I find that if I push the music to the right, then later systems get bunched up until I have 10 or
15 or almost any number of measures on the system and can barely find the measure to put the
pointer in.

It seems that no matter what I do, it tries to limit the number of total pages in the score to 19.
Why won't it just move things over and take up a few more pages if necessary? Even the default
size is too tight -- not a lot, just a bit -- such that I'd like to go through and open it up to say an
average of 6 measures per system and put it on maybe 21 or 22 or 23 pages. It seems to have a
wall up at page 19 and will not allow more.

I've done some pretty complicated music in the past and did not have this problem. I'm thinking
there's some option set that I don't know about.

Thanks for that suggestion. I did manage to get a new layout that's almost workable, but I'd
like to make it perfect. In this case perfection would mean opening it up a page or two. Or
three.

[John Ruggero]

FWIW, I do all layout manually, since Finale is not sophisticated enough to do good layout. It would take a couple of minutes at most to do a 20 page orchestral score with one system per page using the up and down arrows and "Fit Measures". Music with several systems per page requiring good page turns takes more time, but I find it a very satisfying and enjoyable task.

[lynndavidnewton]

FWIW, I do all layout manually, since Finale is not sophisticated enough to do good layout. It would take a couple of minutes at most to do a 20 page orchestral score with one system per page using the up and down arrows and "Fit Measures". Music with several systems per page requiring good page turns takes more time, but I find it a very satisfying and enjoyable task.

John Ruggero, do you find that Fit Measures is useful when the meter changes more or less constantly?

Since my previous post I went though and counted up a surprisingly consistent number of beats per
system, basically between 30 and 35 (the music is mostly quarters and eighths), except for the last
two pages (systems), which are 42 and 8 beats respectively.

I'll experiment with Fit Measures to see if I can get a more consistent result. What I don't understand
is why Finale doesn't seem to want to open up to more pages when things get crowded.

Getting there. Thank you, everyone.

[BuonTempi]

Briefly: Finale spaces the music according to the values in the Music Spacing options. A quarter note has a 'reference' width, which is the distance assigned after it, and all other notes have a proportional value of that distance following them. (E.g. half note is 1.6 times the distance, or whatever.)

Finale then has to fit that to your system width, either squishing or stretching everything to "full justify" those measures to the margins. It makes no attempt to average that out over systems or pages. Invariably, the last system will always be a fraction of the desired result. As said, it doesn't take long to Fit Measures and adjust.

Perhaps someone might make an "Average Fit" plug-in, which puts the average number of measures on every system (alternating +1, -1 integers for balance). But it's likely that even that would still need manual adjustment.

I find that if I push the music to the right, then later systems get bunched up until I have 10 or
15 or almost any number of measures on the system and can barely find the measure to put the
pointer in.

Yes. If you're knocking round several measures, then you're going to get squished. Best to use Fit Measures and make small manual adjustments, or keep knocking over 1 measure, then 2, then 3, etc.

[Peter Thomsen]

… Update Layout is not
distributing things well. (Yes, system locks are off.)

Here are some details:

o I select All, run Music Spacing / Note Spacing
o I run Update Layout …

Hopefully you are aware that Update Layout works differently in Scroll View and Page View:

- Update Layout only affects Page View.

- When you Update Layout from Scroll View, it affects the entire document (= all the pages in Page View).

- When you Update Layout from Page View, it affects the pages from the current page and onwards to the end of the document.
Earlier pages are not updated.

To update the entire document, go back to Page 1 - or go to Scroll View.

[Vaughan]

I can imagine you'd rather not place your composition online but it would certainly be easier for us to help you if we could actually see what it is you're trying to do and to see if our versions of Finale (or our settings) behave differently. I rarely have problems with Finale failing to create extra pages when necessary, except for the occasional instance in which Automatic Update Layout hasn't noticed a reduction in numbers of systems, thereby leaving a number of empty pages, or the opposite, whereby the end of the piece is missing because pages haven't been created. A manual update layout always fixes this, however. FWIW, under Preferences/Edit/Automatic Settings, I have Reflow Measures Across Systems (Maintain System Locks), Reflow Systems Across Pages and, especially, Automatic Update Layout all selected (and, unless I'm entering notes, Automatic Music Spacing deselected). Do you have a good spacing algorithm loaded into the document? [You can use different spacing algorithms for different portions of a single document.] Depending on the type of music, I usually load a fairly tight one, meaning that most of my manual layout edits will require selecting the final measure of a system and then pressing the down arrow, which moves that measure to the next system and locks both systems. Since this moved measure remains selected, I've made a habit of pressing Cmd-Shift-L immediately, which removes the system lock in that second system and reflows the rest of the measures. I hope this helps!

[lynndavidnewton]

> Hopefully you are aware that Update Layout works differently in Scroll View and Page View:

Yes, I'm aware of that and the reasons for it are obvious.

I use page view mainly for looking at things after I've been working for awhile,
and then at the end to check and clean up layout.

[Vaughan]

I took my time writing that and while I was doing it, both BuonTempi and Peter Thomsen posted. Hopefully all this advice will help. i'm only guessing, but if you have extremely long measures, splitting them can help make the layout better. If you'd like a portion of a measure to move to the next system, select either the portion you'd like to remain where it is or the portion you'd like moved to the next system, and then choose the Split Measure plugin (Plugins/Measures). The appropriate amount will already be selected in the 'Split Measure After X Beats' field and you only need to press Return.

[lynndavidnewton]

I can imagine you'd rather not place your composition online but it would certainly be easier for us to help you if we could actually see what it is you're trying to do

Vaughan, thanks for this suggestion. Whereas I'd love to share my score (written 57 years ago, when I was 17 years old --
and would be glad to share it privately with anyone who directly asks), in this case it's not really necessary.

I got the answers to my question, which as I suspected were related basically to not knowing what I was doing.

Here's a longer explanation for anyone who cares to read about me personally. (Yawn!)

For reference, I used to be a full-time composer and a music engraver (for 20 years, using music typewriters et al.),
but personal circumstances forced me to withdraw from the professional music world just as I was hitting stride.

After a long lapse (I meanwhile made a prosperous living as a software engineer), I returned to some of my old music.
It was when Finale was still fairly new. At that time I did seven old scores mainly to learn how to use it.
I have the advantage of knowing music and notation well plus my expertise with software.

Then I put it down for another dozen years. Just recently (about November -- and now age 74) I got the urge to
revisit my old music again, and likely generate some new stuff. (I also have Logic Pro X.) Meanwhile, I have
some fairly difficult older scores that when I was fussing with Finale a dozen or more years ago I stalled on
because my skill level was not yet up to handling them. Then I stopped and meanwhile forgot most everything.

So I'm back to doing some high school music plus some of my more advanced chamber music and the like,
though proceeding with that cautiously -- one piece in particular is going to take several months to do right.

So relative to messing with the layout of this relatively simple piece, my problem was that I did not yet
fully understand Fit Measures and the protocols that other more experienced Finale users follow to whip
a mostly finished work into shape.

I do now and it's done.

I'd tried everything except the right thing. Thanks to the advice I got from this thread, I managed to fix
up my current score just dandy using Fit Measures (I ran it first using 6 per system and then 7 per system,
and it did a pretty reasonable job of it, much to my surprise), and then I just tweaked the ending.

And yes, it did give me more pages at the end. It was originally insisting on 19 pages, and it's now 21,
and the ending is distributed nicely.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I've gotten used to tracking things down in the online manual,
but sometimes it doesn't tell you what you really need to know.

I've found this forum to be extremely useful, and I thank everyone who has bothered to help for taking
the trouble to read my questions and to offer almost-always-illuminating suggestions.

[lynndavidnewton]

I took my time writing that and while I was doing it, both BuonTempi and Peter Thomsen posted. Hopefully all this advice will help. i'm only guessing, but if you have extremely long measures, splitting them can help make the layout better.

In fact I did already do that. I have some measures that are 7/4, but every one breaks neatly into 4/4 + 3/4 (and one
of then 3/4 + 4/4). I split them with a dashed bar line which also makes them more readable. In the final result,
it turns out that none of them broke to a new system in the middle of a split bar. Some of the interim versions
did, though. That would have been all right, but turned out to be unnecessary.

[motet]

I don't understand why people turn off Automatic Update Layout and do Update Layout manually--as has been pointed out many times on these forums, Finale will update the layout automatically when you save or print, so you're not preventing it from doing anything by turning it off, but merely wasting your time. The feature is from the olden days when computer displays were slow and is obsolete now. Turn on Automatic Update Layout and forget about it.

It sounds like the issue you're having is that the final system only has two measures and so gets stretched out. Finale breaks systems as it goes along by putting as many measures on a system as it can and still achieve good music spacing. When it gets to the end, there may not be enough measure for that final system. As someone says, you need to "borrow" some measures from earlier in the piece. What I would do is turn on Automatic Music Spacing and unlock everything. Find the places where you might push a measure forward so there's one less measure in that system and have things still look OK. Start at the beginning and move only forward. As you do this, with the down-arrow in the Selection tool, it will lock both the system you've pushed from and the one you've pushed to. Unlock the latter and let the systems flow forward. Repeat until the last system is filled up to your liking. Then you can lock everything and proceed to final tweaking of the spacing if you need to.

Alternatively, you could try to crowd things a little in a couple of places so that the last system goes away. Sometimes one works, sometimes the other.

[lynndavidnewton]

I don't understand why people turn off Automatic Update Layout and do Update Layout manually--as has been pointed out many times on these forums, Finale will update the layout automatically when you save or print, so you're not preventing it from doing anything by turning it off, but merely wasting your time. The feature is from the olden days when computer displays were slow and is obsolete now. Turn on Automatic Update Layout and forget about it.

It could be that the Automatic Update Layout is turned off by default, meaning that a lot of people
don't even know about it. There are approximately a billion options in Finale, and anyone who sets
out to study the manual from cover to cover (or web page to web page) and explore all the options
and techniques before trying to set some music is going to make a career out of learning how it
works when sometimes the best thing to do is to just jump in.

You are right that Automatic Update Layout is off in my preferences, which I don't remember ever
seeing before today. I don't remember if it was present or I had it checked in the old version of
Finale that I had (from somewhere around 2002), but as far as I know I haven't touched it since
installing Finale 25, at which point I got to work learning the program again.

And as I said, I typically pay little attention to layout when I'm working on something except to
take an occasional look at how it's coming, until I get to the end.

What seems obvious and automatic to someone with experience is not so obvious to someone
without the same experience.

Thanks for that tip. It will certainly help.

[motet]

I'm not chastising you, and share your opinion of Finale's complexity. I think people have gotten frustrated with Finale undoing their manual spacing, and a rumor got started that turning off Automatic Update Layout would help with that, but it won't. It's on by default; without it, bizarre and confusing things can happen. But I've seen Finale settings mysteriously flip on their own, so you may not have turned it off. There's also a button for it on one of the palettes, so it's easy to do by mistake.

I think it's also best to leave Automatic Music Spacing on until the very end when you may wish to tweak things with the Note Position tool or beat charts.

[lynndavidnewton]

... until the very end when you may wish to tweak things with the Note Position tool or beat charts.

What are beat charts? (I do use the note position tool for super-fine tuning things.)

[motet]

The beat chart moves the position of the beat in the measure for the entire "stack", not just one note, so that things remain vertically aligned. Right-click with the measure tool and pick "Edit beat chart." (The manual is out of date on this, I think.)

[lynndavidnewton]

The beat chart moves the position of the beat in the measure for the entire "stack", not just one note, so that things remain vertically aligned. Right-click with the measure tool and pick "Edit beat chart." (The manual is out of date on this, I think.)

How cool! I never stumbled across that one. Obviously that could be quite useful.

[Vaughan]

I use this quite often. If you select the Measure Tool, all measures which have been spaced and which have entries will have two handles on their right barlines. The top one can be used to drag the barline (although I would avoid doing this) and the bottom one will bring up a palette with two rows of handles. If you've used note spacing (as opposed to beat spacing) there'll be a top one for every note in any voice. The spacing for these handles is completely proportional: a quarter is twice as wide as an eighth, an eighth is twice as wide as a sixteenth, etc. (If you've applied beat spacing, there'll be a handle for every beat.) The bottom handle shows how Finale has spaced the notes according to its algorithm, so the lines joining the top and bottom handles will be skewed. The bottom handles can be moved horizontally with the mouse. If you hold Shift down, all the note handles after the one being dragged will move in tandem. This can be very useful, especially in combination with adding/removing space at the end of a measure in Measure Attributes.