Finale: fine-tuning Music spacing

[benwiggy]

This may be well known to some, but here's a useful trick/feature that I hadn't really paid much attention to until now.

In Document Options > Music Spacing, there's an setting for "Minimum Distance between Items". The default value is 3pt (12 EVPUs).

I had a system with lots of beamed notes, where accidentals were crashing against the preceding note. By increasing this value to 6pt and respacing the system, it actually produced a better overall result.

Obviously, the value of this setting may need to vary, depending on the nature of the music. You can set the Distance, then respace a selection, then change the Distance and respace another selection.
It's another tool in the spacing armoury, which may otherwise be forgotten. It also seems to have an effect on lyric syllables and hyphens.

[tisimst]

That's a great tip, benwiggy! Thanks for sharing that. I can see what that does in my mind's eye, but I wonder if you could post a side-by-side graphic of the default 3pt vs. the increased 6pt distance for posterity sake. Even a couple of bars would be sufficient, I think.

[benwiggy]

Here's the offending passage: top is 6pt; bottom is 3pt. I presume it's more of a reference value (on the full size staff?) rather than actually putting 6pt around everything, which would be mad.

[tisimst]

Thanks, benwiggy! For some reason, the forum software put them in reverse order (after on top, before on bottom), but I got the idea.

[OCTO]

How does it affect on the global spacing: documents get more pages as well?
Also, what is the minimum distance, just the note-spacing?

[benwiggy]

If you've locked the systems, it doesn't affect the pages. I think that what it does is to give more room to things that are close together, at the expense of things that are further apart. So in the example above, the minims get less space and the beamed notes get more.

[David Ward]

Both interesting & useful: thank you Ben.

[qanunji]

well, in my settings I reduced it to only 2 EVPU.
why? just type 4 eight's with an accidental in one of them, you'll see that in not so much crowded score the spacing between them is changing because of the accidental.

[benwiggy]

well, in my settings I reduced it to only 2 EVPU.
why? just type 4 eight's with an accidental in one of them, you'll see that in not so much crowded score the spacing between them is changing because of the accidental.

Yes, I certainly think that different values work better for different types of system. It may be that tighter systems benefit from a larger value and "looser" ones would benefit from a smaller value.

[David Ward]

I've just found increasing the minimum distance between items from 3 pt to 4 pt has cured a tendency to collisions on a reduced (65%) stave in those bars in which this stave has more notes (shorter values) than the full sized staves. (I may up-load a screenshot later.)

So very many thanks again Ben for drawing attention to this.