thanks, I already tried that though...the sizes of the bars still vary though. I tried to set the note spacings to equal parts of the whole measure also (eg if the bar size is 12, I set half note to 6, quarter to 3. eight note to 1.5 and so on..and then I respaced the notes)...it's not bad, but also not exactly the same size...I attached the file...
Sibelius sizes bars based on the content of the bar, so there is no way to set a bar width, except by changing the content.
The most common workaround is to create a number of small notes - 16ths or 32nds, in an unused voice (say voice 4), and hide them. Do this for one bar, and copy into all the other bars.
This means that each bar will be at least big enough to hold those notes. If your real content makes a bar bigger than that, divide the size of the hidden notes by 2 (16th > 32nd), and copy those in.
I would recommend not messing with the note spacing, as that reall y tends to make the music hard to read.
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Bob
Sib 5.2.5, Windows XP Pro SP3, 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo; Audiophile 2496; 4 G RAM. The year is 2009.
I am an experienced Sibelius user, but am not affiliated with Sibelius Software.
I've been a copyist/engraver for twenty years plus now, and I've never felt the need to create exactly equivalent bar widths. In fact, the common wisdom is that evenly placed barlines on more than one line of a part will actually make it harder to read.
Back in the day of pen & pencil, staff paper with preprinted barlines did make it easier to dash off a chart without it turning into a complete mess, but that was then...
This is, of course, a completely different issue from "laying out the page to the phrase."
yeah I know, but for the purpose of soloing over a jazz standard, where the purpose is more on focusing on the chords, it would make sense to have even sized bars...I just switched to sibelius a week ago, I thought it might have such a function (I really don't like finale very much, but it has such a function) and I simply overlooked it. thanks though.
I've been a composer for a while too, and even, identical bar widths are what, in my experience, drummers usually like to see. I'm running into this issue right now - it would be wonderful if Sibelius could do this for me as an option, so I don't have to enter and hide notes. Finale, Encore, and even lowly old Composer's Mosaic by Motu even has this feature.
The physical width of bars in Sibelius is based on the contents of the bars. If you have a lot of content, the bars will be wider.
One thing to do might be to add an extra instrument, fill it with 16th notes, mute it, and hide it with Focus On Staves. It will affect the widths of the other staves without being visible, which might be a bit less fussy that putting notes into a bar that already contains notes.
You can use the Note Spacing rule to get you nearly there quite quickly. In the part, set the spacing for the relevant note-lengths (probably semiquaverss (16ths) to semibreves (whole notes)) to double for each doubling in note-value. Then select the whole part and use Reset Note Spacing.
This will not be perfect in some circumstances, but should be absolutely fine for a drum part, as long as you don't try to squeeze more bars on each system.
Hope that helps
Jeremy
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music editor/engraver
Sibelius 6.2 | iMac 3.2GHz i3 | OS X Version 10.6.7 Snow Leopard
I've just struck the same problem with a jazz standard - the first three bars in the line are mainly quavers (quarter-notes) with a chord per bar; the last bar is a semibreve (whole note) with four - rather complicated - chords. Left to its own devices Sibelius scrunches up the chords in the last bar to be more than slightly illegible.
I tried Bob Zavalich's idea of sticking in another voice playing eight quavers (quarter-notes) in the last bar and hiding them, and that's saved the day.
If you have equal sized bars there's a much bigger risk that the musician might skip a line, could be a percussionist having to look down to change mallets or changing instrument.
Especially if the content are the same of course, like the snare drum part for Bolero.
I still think it would be a nice option to have though in some cases. I also wish that everything could be properly locked when using graphic notation for instance or maybe I'm missing something.
well, the point was not discussing in which situation you might need something like that, i think it's pretty obvious that u don't want it all the time. it was more meant to solve the technical problem of being able to do it in the rare occasion that you are in need of it.
I learned Sibelius before Finale, and then had to learn Finale for a copying gig. What a terrible learning curve! Much harder to learn than Sibelius. When I would speak to hard core Finale users, their defense was that the steep learning curve was worth it, because you could do anything with Finale. I thought that was true with Sibelius, but I'm starting to find that that is simply not the case. This thread is a good example of that. I have written out a rhythm exercise where I want every measure to be the same length. Please don't tell me why I shouldn't do that; that is what I want to do, and there is no simple way to do it, as there is in Finale and other programs. Sibelius is a pleasure to use, but it DOES have significant limitations.
Here's how. Note the hidden notes in voice 2 acting as spacers. Insert the first note, hold down R until the score is full, Reset Note Spacing, Select and Hide all voice 2 notes. Not TOO onerous for a rarely-needed procedure?
Sibelius tries to be musical. Sometimes, instead of a brute-force "THIS is how I want the layout!" you need to coax it into thinking "this is how the musical content requires the layout to be!"
It would be interesting to compile a list of things Finale can do that Sibelius really can't - even if it requires some ingenuity rather than a straightforward menu option.
This is not the first thread asking for evenly spaced bars, and it could be useful, as seen in the attachment from a very well-known Fake Book.
Though i personally don't care either way about this feature, it's been asked for enough that Sibelius might at least consider it, and I've seen things come to pass in Sebelius with much fewer requests.
Interesting that in your example the bar spacing is not QUITE uniform - when the inital clef, key- and time-signature needed extra space they got it. To my eye they could have usefully been given a little more, even if it did mean the copyist couldn't draw quite so many barlines with one positioning of his ruler!
Whether this layout is desirable, or just "how the union copyists used to do it" remains debatable :-)
Actually, it's not debatable. It's common here on the west coast of the U.S., and by the top professional copyists. Thanks to Laurence for the work around (btw, it's not a rarely-needed feature, I would create a template with even bars and use it every week for film and television session work).
But I don't understand why the Sibelius team gives little respect to this request, even to the point in telling us that we "shouldn't do it that way" - it may not be convention anywhere besides here, but this is a sizable market, and if Sibelius had this simple feature implemented, we could use it here (and stop requesting it), and nobody else need bother about it.
Sorry for the rant - Sibelius, please consider this.
Please know that I'm not upset at Sibelius, and I'm not simply criticizing it or complaining that it doesn't measure up to any other program. I've chosen Sibelius because I think it's the best notation program available.
I hope that in the future we'll all feel comfortable enough to make feature requests and provide constructive criticism to this wonderful program.
>I hope that in the future we'll all feel comfortable enough to make feature requests and provide constructive criticism to this wonderful program.
I really feel that we are already there. Feel from to offer suggestion and report bugs and whatever else you feel needs to be done. The people at Sibelius, especially Daniel, read this page, and what you say will be noted.
That does not mean that what you ask for will be implemented, of course; they have their own priorities. But I don't think anything presented in this thread, for example, is at all out of line.
Not sure if this is helpful, but I am engraving theory exercises for a student book and need the bars to be equally spaced. It is only a series of whole notes (two lines of 8 bars), but they have varying accidentals for the exercise. Those accidentals seem to change the widths of the bars so that the exercise looks uneven.
For this sort of thing, it is easiest to use a score format for your exercises. Adding a piano instrument would do for the example you posted. Then stop the barlines from drawing between the staves, and untick 'initial barline' in the Bars section of the Properties pane for the first bar of each 'system'.
I attach a Sib 6 version file based on yours, with these changes made.
(By the way, there were special 'Normal' barlines for the first five in your attached score, which should be selected and deleted.)
Hope that helps
Jeremy
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music editor/engraver
Sibelius 6.2 – 8.6 on a Mac running OS X 10.10.5
Have you met Ms Jones HC1.sib
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