113: Barlines - adding an initial barline to a single staff

It's unconventional to have an initial barline at the start of a system containing a single staff, but in some hand-copied jazz sheets this is often required.
To do this in Sibelius 3 (and later) go to House Style > Engraving Rules (Ctrl+Shift+E or Command-Shift-E) and select the 'Barlines' option on the left hand side. Then tick 'Barline at start of single staves'. If you're not yet using the latest version of Sibelius, get an upgrade.

In earlier versions of Sibelius (v2 and v1) it is not quite as easy - follow the instructions below.

  • Add an extra blank staff beneath the single "real" staff
  • In File > House Style > Staves, set "Distance between staves" to -2. (Yes, a negative number: at this point, the staves should partially overlap.)
  • In Create > Staff type change, modify the No lines (hidden) staff type by ticking the Initial barline box, and then click the Create button.
  • Apply the modified staff type to the extra staff, right from the beginning.
  • If you also want to hide the clef on the real line, create a new staff type, based on 5 lines but with Initial clef switched off, and then apply this type to the real staff, somewhere beyond the first bar.

Once you've set this up once, why not save it as a manuscript paper so you'll be able to use it again in the future?

Details

Product
Sibelius
Versions
affected
1.003 - 1.4, 2 - 2.11, 3.0 - 3.1.3, 4.0 - 4.1, 5.0 - 5.2.5, 6.0 - 6.2, 7.0 - 7.1
Changed
09 Sep 2005

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