Music spacing across barlines - how to configure?

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mainterm
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Post by mainterm » Mon Jan 07, 2019 10:21 pm

Hello experts!

I'm trying to find a setting which allows me to systematically adjust the amount of space which occurs between notes across a barline. Finale appears to assign a buffer to the barline or some kind of offset and I cannot find a way to adjust it.

Any help is greatly appreciated!


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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Mon Jan 07, 2019 10:34 pm

mainterm wrote:… notes across a barline …
Note values are (normally) not supposed to go across a barline.
However, such “cross-barline” notes may occur if you try to notate barlines in ancient music, that originally was notated, before barlines were invented.

One way to deal with the spacing:
Notate each system as one (big) measure, and insert (false) barlines with the Expression Tool.
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motet
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Post by motet » Mon Jan 07, 2019 10:54 pm

Perhaps all that's wanted is this, which I think is the space at the beginning and end of each bar:

mainterm
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Post by mainterm » Tue Jan 08, 2019 5:24 am

thank you motet. And I appreciate your response Peter - I think my question wasn't detailed enough. I'm aiming at something a little different than your answer provided.

...

So one obvious play was to use the setting motet shared and eliminate extra spacing (0 and 0). This appears to be perhaps more part of the journey and less part of the destination.

Applying 0 before and 0 after yields a situation which does come much closer to preserving an equal note spacing across the bar, but clearly leaves the barline itself in an unacceptable position [see image below]. I'll try to work in this space using negative numbers to see if that works. In any case...

I don't aim to be pedantic here, I'm just curious if it's possible to work within the limits of the finale music spacing apparatus and still be able to "float" barlines with a setting - instead of having to manually hack it with measure tool.

As you can see below (using 0 and 0 in notes and rest setting), the first and second 1/16s are closer together than the second and third and barline is too close to the third. So I'll experiment further...

Thanks!

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motet
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Post by motet » Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:53 am

I don't think what you want is possible. If you arrange things so the spacing is equal for one pair of measures, when you apply to to measures of a different width it's no longer equal.

You can change the beginning-of-measure space on an individual basis by using the Measure tool and dragging the handle shown in red below.

mainterm
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Post by mainterm » Tue Jan 08, 2019 8:21 pm

motet wrote:I don't think what you want is possible. [...]
Alas - not an uncommon situation for me!

Thanks again for the info

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Wed Jan 09, 2019 5:12 am

mainterm,

The better we understand, the better we can help.

Could you perhaps explain, (exactly) what you are trying to do, and why?

When we fully understand the issue, we might be able to suggest a simpler solution.

By The Way:
motet suggested adjusting the beginning-of-measure space by dragging a handle.
You can also use the Measure Attributes to adjust, numerically, both the beginning-of-measure space and the end-of-measure space.
MeasureAttributes.jpg
Something to try:
Select all the measures, then double-click to open the Measure Attributes.
Set a negative value for the end-of-measure space, to adjust for the “barline spacing”.
If e. g. the Spacing Before Music is 8pt, then try -8pt as Extra Space At End.
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mainterm
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Post by mainterm » Wed Jan 09, 2019 6:15 am

Peter Thomsen wrote:mainterm,

The better we understand, the better we can help.

Could you perhaps explain, (exactly) what you are trying to do, and why?

[...]
Thank you Peter for your reply.

I'll start with the why - I was re-reading MPA's 1993 SOP on engraving practice and twigged this this:
Screen Shot 2019-01-08 at 11.00.57 PM.png
So I was fooling around trying to honor the aims of this odd statement. Wouldn't want my scores to be disturbing after all!

Generally I think these things should be taken with a grain of salt, standards after all just don't cover the often very import outliers.

But wanting to leverage the configurability of a system like finale instead of manually making it work, I was curious to see what was possible.

This is essentially the what:
Screen Shot 2019-01-08 at 11.03.08 PM.png
This was achieved using the doc options idea motet shared.

The measure attributes solution you've provided is also worth exploring, and I will do that next - I'd ask perhaps - with an eye toward library management, do measure attribute settings get saved when exporting a library? Easy enough to test, but perhaps an easy answer is available.

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Peter Thomsen
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Post by Peter Thomsen » Wed Jan 09, 2019 6:39 am

mainterm wrote:… Generally I think these things should be taken with a grain of salt …
Indeed.
Just look at 3 editions of the same music and find 3 different ways of doing it.

The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. :mrgreen:

mainterm wrote:… do measure attribute settings get saved when exporting a library? …
No.
A library contains document specific defaults.
Measure Attributes that deviate from the defaults (such as Extra Space At End of measure), are not saved in a library.
Mac OS X 12.6.9 (Monterey), Finale user since 1996

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