broozar wroteHi everyone, I am working on a full score layout. Naturally, the height of the score varies from page to page, depending on what must be printed. But of course this looks bad, as every page has a different baseline. See screenshot: http://somepic.someserver.de/pics/big/0 ... 99826b.png

Is there an easy way to "fill" a page, meaning the first staff is always on the top of the page and the last staff is always at the bottom of the page, without manually re-spacing every page?

I did some experiments; and I was able to do it, albeit with a few caveats . . .

THOUGHTS

(1) The "top and bottom" staves on the same page is easy, since this is what NOTION favors when you specify "Pages Down" as the "View" and create a Custom page size (as explained below) . . .

(2) Getting each staff to occupy the same vertical space does not appear possible, but it can be smoothed in a practical way . . .

[NOTE: If you are in a hurry, then skip the 'DETAILS" section and the not so succinct history of "popular music" of the 20th century and jump to the "SUMMARY" section. You will mss what probably are a few surprising observations, one of which answers the question, "Is that really where Jimi Hendrix got the idea for the Intro to 'Purple Haze'?", but so what . . . ]

DETAILS

I nearly never print the scores for my songs, since I do all the instruments with VSTi virtual instruments hosted in Studio One Professional and the music notation in a corresponding NOTION score on ReWire MIDI staves; but there have been a few times when I made PDF files for a score--mostly to show something or to explain a concept . . .

With the exception of a trumpet player and a piano player in the mid-1960s when I was in high school and was playing bass in nightclubs, none of the musicians and singers I know can read music, although as the consequence of being in a liturgical boys choir, I can sight-sing soprano treble clef notation, which is the reason I do everything on soprano treble clef staves, with the exception of Realivox Blue (RealiTone)--my favorite virtual female soprano--since the way she sings and what she sings are controlled by deep bass keyswitches and is easier to do when she is hosted in the NOTION score on a grand staff . . .

Instead of focusing on music notation, my comrades focused on a mnemonic system that is a strange variation of Nashville Notation, and for the most part is based on the name of the music group or singer of the various songs we learned note-by-note from vinyl records . . .

Some of these mnemonics are well-known or at least easily guessed, where a "Jimi Hendrix" refers to the classic chord heard on "Purple Haze", and a "James Brown" refers to a similar chord heard on many of his songs form the mid-1960s, at least one of which is the classic "Stormy Monday" chord, which is a 9th when played on guitar and is a three-finger chord . . .

[NOTE: Playing the A4 on the high-pitch "e" string is optional, and it makes it a different chord, but it's easier to finger; so for the proper chord do not strum or play the highest note. Play the middle four notes, instead . . . ]


"Stormy Monday" Chord



In contrast, a "Jimi Hendrix" or "Purple Haze" is a four-finger chord played on the middle strings . . .


"Jimi Hendrix" (a.k.a., "Purple Haze") Chord

And then there are the "Heat Wave" chords . . .

[NOTE: The "walk down" is a "reverse 'Walk Don't Run'", which refers to the Intro chords for "Walk Don't Run" (The Ventures). The "reverse 'Louie Louie'" is the same as an "upside-down 'Louie Louie'" and a "backward 'Louie Louie'"--depending primarily on whether you got turned-around the last time you wandered around in the mathematical fourth dimension--which is based on {1, 4, 5} in some sequence and is a garage band variation of Nashville Notation devised independently by subhuman teenage mutants such as myself, where the key to all these mnemonics is a combination of simplicity and stupidity. . . ]









This might appear to be the goofiest "notation" system in the known universe; but (a) we were young and had no sense and (b) it's the only practical way to remember how to play four hours of songs without needing sheet music or being able to read sheet music . . .

For practical purposes, the goal is to memorize at least 40 songs, pretty much notes for notes . . .

Musicians who read music notation use similar strategies, which typically are called "cheat sheets" . . .

For what one might colloquially call "popular music", once you become proficient playing an instrument, you do not need to see all the notes . . .

Perhaps more to the. point, nearly all "popular music" songs are composed using ideas, chord patterns, and various bits from a handful of songs . . .

One of the best example of this is learned by listening to "Hall of the Mountain King" (Grieg), "Purple Haze" (The Jimi Hendrix Experience), "The James Bond 007 Theme Tune" (Monty Norman), "Born To Be Wild" (Steppenwolf), "Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson), and "Like A Virgin" ()Madonna), where the first two are the same song, and the last four are the same song . . .













Consider the instrumental music notation for the current song I am developing, "Say It's True", which I formatted to print as a PDF file . . .

Say-Its-True.pdf (56 pages)



In some not insignificant respects, it's a puzzle constructed with puzzle pieces from Elvis Presley, Beatles, The Doors, Mozart, and lots of other bits, where the part I "borrowed" from Elvis is the sequence {want, need, love} from one of his great songs . . .



The bassoon is "borrowed" from "Flying" (Beatles), but it's played on a Mellotron on the Beatles song, yet sounds to me like a bassoon; the timpani is from "Every Little Thing" (Beatles); and the Mozart piano in the interlude was inspired by The Doors and Mozart, of course . . .





[NOTE: "Riders On The Storm" also has the chord pattern from the James Bond theme, which makes it part of the set of essentially the same songs. This three-chord phrase was used in a lot of songs in the late-1960s and early-1970s by "L.A." musical groups; and it has the advantage of not forcing a specific vocal melody . . . ]



SUMMARY

(1) To get each compete set staves on a page, I used a Custom page size, where the key is to make it long or tall enough to get all the staves on the title page, and I set the "View" to "Pages Down".

[NOTE: I started with 11" by 22" (as shown) but changed it later to 11" by 21" (not shown) for the PDF file . . . ]



(2) Smoothing the vertical placement of staves is done in "Full Score Options . . . " found on the "Score" menu., where the strategy is to set the vertical spacing as high as possible.





As you observed, the primary problem with vertical spacing is the pitches of notes (above or below the staff); and as best as I can determine, the practical way to provide as much vertical space above and below staves is to increase the staff spacing, which helps but does not provide what one might call a "precise equity" solution . . .

When you print to PDF, printing to paper usually allows "fit to page" or something similar; so even though the Custom size might be 11" by 21", it will be sized proportionally to fit to the size of the paper . . .

Beyond this, It's a matter of doing specific manual layout, which can take a while and is a lot more work . . .

Lots of FUN!