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Document Options-Music Spacing dialog box

How to get there

Choose Document > Document Options then select Music Spacing.

What it does

Because the matter of music spacing is one of personal taste, this dialog box lets you determine how Finale handles music spacing; for example, you can specify whether or not extra space should be allotted to accommodate lyrics or chord symbols, or specify the minimum distance between tied notes. To select the default measurement units, click on the Edit menu, then Measurement Units, then select the desired units.

Avoid Collision of: Notes and Accidentals • Articulations • Chords • Lyrics • Expressions • Clefs • Unisons • Seconds • Ledger Lines. Because lyric syllables, accidentals, and other elements are "attached" to their notes, they may require that extra space be allotted to their notes. If the appropriate options are selected, Finale will add enough additional space to each beat or note to ensure that none of these elements overlap (or, in the case of Notes and Accidentals, that no accidentals overlap other notes or a barline).
Minimum Measure Width • Maximum Measure Width. Using these text boxes, you can specify a minimum or maximum width for the measures in the region you respace with the Music Spacing command. If any measures are narrower or wider than you’ve specified, Finale will adjust them so that they fall within the specified range.

This feature can be useful for setting whole-rest and whole-note measures to some width that’s wider than Finale’s spacing feature would ordinarily allot.

Minimum Distance Between Items. Enter the minimum distance (in the current measurement units) you want to appear between elements selected for collision avoidance.
Minimum Distance Between Notes with Ties. Enter the minimum distance (In the current measurement units) you want to separate ties notes.
Manual Positioning: Clear • Ignore • Incorporate. Manual positioning refers to any manual dragging you’ve done with the Speedy Entry tool or the Special Tools Tool. Choose Clear from the drop-down list to remove all manual adjustments while spacing the music. Choose Ignore from the drop-down list to have Finale space the music as if it weren’t manually positioned; after spacing, Finale will add the positioning to its result. Finally, choose Incorporate to include any manual adjustments into Finale’s calculations while spacing the music.
Grace Note Offset on Entry: Automatic Distance Between • Keep Current • Reset to Grace Note Offset. Enter a value here (in the measurement unit chosen under the Edit menu) to specify the distance between consecutive grace notes. Choose Keep Current to leave grace notes at their current positions upon music spacing (use this option if you want to retain manual positioning applied to grace notes). Choose Reset to Grace Note Offset to set grace notes back to the positions specified by the Grace Note Offset on Entry option in Document Options-Grace Notes.
Use Fonts and Resolution from: Screen • Printer. These options account for the differences between the screen and printer resolution. Choose Printer to ensure that computations use printer fonts and resolution from the currently selected printer.
Use Spacing Width Table; Widths. Select Use Spacing Width Table to use the spacing setting in the currently loaded Spacing Table. Click the Widths button to enter the Spacing Widths dialog box, where you can view or change the actual pairings of rhythmic values to width allotments. (See Duration Allotments dialog box.)
Use Default Width If Duration Not In Table. In each of the Spacing Width Libraries Finale uses to calculate the appropriate spacing to give each note, there are width allotments assigned to each of two dozen note values. For example, Finale knows precisely how much space to give a quarter note, an eighth note, and so on.

Sometimes, however, Finale will encounter a note in your score for which it doesn’t have a predetermined width value—a quintuplet sixteenth note, for example. If you leave Use Default Width unselected, Finale will automatically consult its Spacing Library to find out the widths assigned to the nearest note values—a sixteenth note and a 32nd note, in the quintuplet example—and interpolates a new value automatically. This intelligent method will always give you the most professional results.

If you select Use Default Width, Finale will assign all unknown note values to a single default catch-all width value. See Duration Allotments dialog box for instructions on setting this default value, whose Duration is called zero.

Use These Values: Reference Duration; Duration • Reference Width • Scaling Factor. Select Use These Values to use a spacing ratio for all values instead of setting individual values using the Spacing Table. The Reference Duration is the selected note to base the spacing on, such as the quarter note or whole note. Click Duration to bring up the Set Duration dialog box to select from a palette instead of typing in the EDU for the specified duration. See Set Duration dialog box. The Reference Width tells Finale the amount of space to allocate to the Reference Duration.

The Scaling Factor (a number from 1.0 to 2.0) determines the spacing relationship between the Reference Duration and other durations in the document. For example, if a quarter note has a Reference Width of 72 EVPUs and the Scaling Factor is set to 2.0, the half note will receive 144 EVPUs (or twice as much) space. Conversely, a Scaling Factor of 1.0 will give the same amount of space to every note. The Scaling Factor for Fibonacci Spacing, a commonly used relationship in many fields, not just music spacing, is 1.618.

OK • Cancel. Click OK to confirm, or Cancel to discard, the changes you’ve made in this dialog box. You return to the score.

Tip: Music Spacing can be applied when notes are entered with Automatic Music Spacing (Preferences-Edit) or select a region of music with the Selection tool and choose Apply Music Spacing from the Utilities menu.