Manually spaced multi-measure rests won't stay put

[mark carlson]

In this piece, for solo viola, 2 vns, cello, and piano, one movement is solo viola with the other instruments tacet. For the tacet instrument parts, I have the movement divided into two multi-measure rests--which I am happy enough with, because I don't want to deal with renumbering all the measures, as I would if I follow earlier advice on how to make a single-measure rest for a tacet movement.

The first of those multi-measure rests is 3 measures and the second is 30, but they show up in Finale as equal widths. I would like to have them proportional in the parts--as in the attached jpg file--and in order to do that, I thought it would be as easy as dragging the barline at the end of the first MM rest to the left. The trouble is, the moment I press "print", whether to create a PDF or to literally print it, the barline that I have moved manually bounces back to being right in the middle of the line.

I have attached the relevant part of the score, but because of formatting stuff I had to do, it will look like a mess to you (and to me). But you can see the multi-measure rests in the violin 1, violin 2, and violin 3 parts, in spite of that.

I thought I could turn the 33 measures into one MM rest by changing the double barline at the end of 3rd measure and hiding the time signature in the 4th measure, but it still came out as two MM rests, equally divided.

I even tried, using Multimeasure Rests, Edit, and changing the width of the first one to .5 and the 2nd to 2.25. They look perfect on the screen—until I print, and then it reverts to both of them being 1.25 wide.

Why won't they stay as I set them? And more important, how can I get it to stay put?

Thanks,

[motet]

This happens when music spacing is triggered due to changing those measures in the score, even in some other part. To prevent it, go to Document Options / Multimeasure Rests,and uncheck "Update automatically." You need to be careful, though. If you later add music to the score in the middle of the rest it won't show up in the part automatically. You would need to select the rest in the part and pick Multimeasure Rests->Create again. Unchecking it after all music has been entered should be safe.

[mark carlson]

Yay! It worked! Thanks a million!

[Gareth Green]

FWIW, one of Jari Williamson's plug-ins is designed for this specific task ie: respacing all MM rests so that their width is proportional to the number of bars rest. I use it all the time, with no problems. But, as Motet points out, the first thing the plug-in does is to turn off automatic update of MM rests, so you really don't want to apply it until the very latest stages of formatting, when you are confident that all music entry is complete.

[mark carlson]

FWIW, one of Jari Williamson's plug-ins is designed for this specific task ie: respacing all MM rests so that their width is proportional to the number of bars rest. I use it all the time, with no problems. But, as Motet points out, the first thing the plug-in does is to turn off automatic update of MM rests, so you really don't want to apply it until the very latest stages of formatting, when you are confident that all music entry is complete.

Good to know! Thank you.