Customizing your Document Setup

Custom Document Setup

The Custom System panel is displayed when you press the Custom System button in the Document Setup panel. This panel lets you set up your score with detailed information about clefs, braces, barlines and staff labels. This panel is particularly useful for creating orchestral and chamber ensemble scores of up to 40 staves per system.

Choose New from the File menu. The Document Setup panel will appear.
Select the Custom System button on the Document Setup panel.
Choose the settings you want for your new document.
Press Done on the Custom System panel.
Choose the remaining settings and options from the Document Setup panel (eg. Page Size, Staves per System, etc.)
Press the Create Document button on the Document Setup panel to create the new document, or press the Cancel button to cancel the new document. To discard your changes and return to the default settings, press the Revert button.

The Custom System panel lets you specify the following information:

Staff Labels which will appear on each page of the score. The second column of labels appears directly to the left of the staff. The first column of labels is centred between two staves. In the example below: 1, 2, Viola, Cello, Sop. 1, Sop. 2, and Alto 1 appear respectively beside staves 1 to 7, while Violin is centred between staves 1 and 2, and Piano is centred between staves 8 and 9. A second set of (Abbreviated) labels can be specified as well. These appear on all pages other than the first page if the Use Abbreviated Staff Labels button is checked.

The Staff Spacing between staves can be specified - these are the number of staff spaces between the bottom of one staff and the top of the next.
The clef that will begin on each of the staves. Of course, clefs can be changed in the score as needed. In the example above, Vla has an alto clef, Vc has a bass clef, the Pno has a treble and bass clef while all the other instruments have treble clefs.
The Brace format for the score. To set up the brace format, type the staff numbers (from the top of the system) that the brace starts and ends at and indicate the brace type. In the example below, a straight brace will be created from staff 1 to staff 4 and from staff 5 to 7 and a piano brace will be created from staff 8 to staff 9. Braces can be nested if needed.

D) The Barline format for the score. As in the case of braces, you specify the starting and ending staff numbers along with the barline type (solid or dotted). In the example below, there is a single barline encompassing the first 4 staves, then separate barlines on each of the next three staves, then a single barline joining staff numbers 8 and 9 (the piano staves). As a shortcut, you can click on the check boxes at the bottom of the Barline column if you want each staff to have a separate barline or you want one barline to run throughout the system.

E) You can also indicate that you want System Dividers to be included in your score. (System dividers are the two angled lines commonly found in orchestral music to separate systems).

When you have set up all the characteristics of your score, click the Done button and you will return to the Document Setup panel. The Barline and Brace settings in the Document Setup panel should now be set to Custom Brace and Custom Barline to indicate that you want the the document setup specifications taken from the Custom System panel.

The settings listed above should give you the system layout shown below.

- Make sure you have set the correct number of systems and staves in the Document Setup panel since this panel determines how many staves and systems will be placed on the page. Even though you provided information for 9 staves in the Custom System panel, if the Document Setup panel is set for only 2 staves per system, only the first two staves will be drawn in each system.

- if a multi-line staff label is required you can use the backslash character - \ - to indicate line breaks. For example, a label entered as: Horn\in F will appear in the score as: