Adjusting note spacing at individual rhythmic positions

You can make adjustments to the note spacing at individual rhythmic positions independently of your project-wide settings.

Note

  • Moving notes far away from their intended rhythmic positions can be misleading for players reading the music.

  • When Note Spacing is activated, you cannot make select or edit anything other than note spacing handles. To resume normal selection and editing, deactivate Note Spacing or return to Write mode.

Procedure

  1. In the Formatting panel, activate Note Spacing.
  2. Select a square handle on the dashed line at each rhythmic position whose spacing you want to adjust.
  3. Move the selected handles in any of the following ways:

    • Press Alt-Right Arrow to move them to the right.

      This increases the space to the left of the rhythmic position of each selected handle.

    • Press Alt-Left Arrow to move them to the left.

      This decreases the space to the left of the rhythmic position of each selected handle.

      Tip

      If you want to move handles by larger increments, you can press Ctrl/Cmd as well as the standard key command, for example, Ctrl/Cmd-Alt-Left Arrow.

    Note

    You cannot move note spacing handles with the mouse, you can only move them using the keyboard.

Result

The selected note spacing handles are moved, which increases/decreases the spacing to the left of their original rhythmic position. This also affects the spacing of each selected rhythmic position on all staves in the system.

System breaks are automatically inserted at the start/end of the system in which you adjusted note spacing.

Note

You cannot select/delete system break signposts when Note Spacing is activated.

Example

Figure: Moving note spacing handles to the left reduces spacing to the left of the rhythmic position

Figure: Moving note spacing handles to the right increases spacing to the left of the rhythmic position