Changing the size of individual staves

You can change the size of individual staves in each flow independently of other staves and your layout settings. For example, piano accompaniment parts often include the solo line of the instrument the piano is accompanying on a smaller staff.

Figure 1. A piano part with smaller viola staff above

You can change the size of individual staves to a set scale size, expressed as a percentage of the normal staff size in the layout, or set a custom scale.

Tip

If you want to change the staff size to represent an alternative version of a passage, you can instead add an ossia staff, which you can show for specific regions.

Prerequisite

If you are in Engrave mode, Graphic Editing is selected in the Engrave toolbox.

Procedure

  1. Select an item on the staff whose size you want to change. You can do this in Write mode and Engrave mode.
    Note

    You can only change the size of a single staff at a time.

  2. Choose Edit > Staff Size > [Staff size]. You can also choose this option from the context menu.
  3. Optional: If you choose Custom Staff Size, you must set the staff size using the Custom Staff Size dialog that opens.

Result

The size of the selected staff is changed in the current flow. This also works in combination with the other ways of changing the staff size, such as changing the size of all staves in the layout or changing the size of staves from specific system/frame breaks.

Note
  • Changing the staff size of individual staves affects the staff size of all instruments held by that player.

  • Changing the staff size of individual staves affects its size for the whole flow.

  • If the size of system object font styles is set to Staff-relative, the staff size of the top staff in each instrument family group affects the size of system objects if they are shown above that bracketed group. Font styles that are set to Absolute are unaffected by staff size.