Reduce width of measure

Dorico
1

When I finished my first try at transcribing an arrangement the printed version was very small.

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After looking at info about layouts I made layout changes to try and get a larger printout. The result is much better except the second system is only one measure. How can I correct this? The first (and maybe second measure) on the third system could go up to the second system, but I can’t figure out how to do that.
Here’s the more readable version but with the one measure second system.
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2

Assuming you aren’t importing from xml, Dorico just doesn’t format things this way out of the box. Did you go into Engrave mode and add a system break or do any other tweaking there? Are there any red triangles on the pages on the right panel in Engrave mode. Remove any system breaks (turn on view signposts) and remove any page overrides and things should look much better.

3

Maybe at some point you gave the command ‘make into system’, which, technically, puts system breaks around the passage you had selected, including a property to ‘wait until next’, which prevents Dorico to break a system where it would prefer to do so itself.
To make the system breaks visible, choose View menu → Signposts → System breaks (the menu item gets a checkmark). System breaks now appear as red ‘flags’ in your score. Because they’re visible now, you can can select and delete them where they bother you.

4

In addition to Make Into System, there are other ways system breaks can get added (invisibly, when signposts are hidden). In Engrave mode:

  • Press , (comma) to move a bar up to the previous system. Dorico sets a break with “Wait for next system break” in order to force the extra bar on the system.
  • Manual adjustments to note spacing. As soon as you make an edit, Dorico fixes the system so that the bars don’t jump up or down. I delete these breaks after making changes.
1 Like
5

The version with the long measure was after I changed a few things to get the larger size of the music. But I did check into a system break box, found it at the measure after the long measure, deleted it and everything was the way I wanted it, without a long measure. Thanks.

1 Like
6

If adding/removing systems breaks or making bars into systems wasn’t working, other things you can do in similar situations (in case it’s helpful for the future)

  • reduce the minimum gaps between lyrics and between lyrics and hyphens: this reduces the amount of horizontal space required by lyrics, and can prompt extra bars to fit into systems - you can do this in Library > Engraving Options > Lyrics

  • reduce the note spacing for the layout a little (for the same reason)

Ps in bars 6 and 8, you seem to have extra underscores at the end of those lyrics, which are appearing as elision slurs. Bar 6 looks to be missing an extender line, also.