Staff System Optimization

How to get there

Click the Page Layout Tool  . Choose Optimize Staff Systems from the Page Layout Menu.

What it does

In published full scores, it’s customary to omit from a system any staves that consist of entirely of rests. The result is a more compact and readable score. In Finale, this process of suppressing the printing of empty staves within each system is called optimizing systems.

Use this dialog box to place or remove optimization on the specified staff systems. Optimizing can perform two functions: it always makes the staves in the staff systems independently adjustable in Page View for a single staff system; and—depending on your settings—it removes empty staves from the staff systems.

Using this dialog box, you can specify the systems you want optimized—all of them, for example. Finale redraws your score (in Page View), omitting blank staves from the specified systems; you’ll find that your score now fits on fewer pages.

Optimizing systems in Finale has another important benefit: it permits staves within staff systems to be independently movable in Page View. Under normal circumstances, when you move, respace, or rearrange staves using the Staff Tool all staff systems are affected. If you have optimized a system, however, you’ll find that the Staff Tool now allows you to vary the positioning and spacing of staves for a single staff system. Furthermore, again using the Staff Tool, you can create a new grouping of staves which will affect only that staff system, letting you change the way in which your staves are bracketed. With groups, you can also tell Finale to optimize staves together for instruments that require more than one staff, such as piano and harp.

Finale locks in this staff configuration. If, for example, you return to Scroll View after optimizing systems, and add some music to a staff which no longer appears in Page View (because the system has been optimized), the staff won’t reappear. If you want to edit, reformat, enlarge, or reduce your music, remove optimization before you do it (by choosing the Optimize Staff Systems command again and selecting Remove System Optimization), and later reapply optimization. For this reason, it’s best to make optimization the last thing you do before printing, after the piece has been formatted, proofread, and ready to be given its final layout. See Staff Attributes dialog box.

A measure with a "real" whole rest—one you’ve entered with the Simple Entry or Speedy Entry Tool—is not considered empty. If you notice that an apparently empty staff won’t disappear from its system, it probably contains a "real" whole rest, which you must remove before reapplying the Optimize All Staff Systems command.

You can, however, use this fact to your advantage to prevent the disappearance of a staff you don’t want removed—the treble-clef staff of a piano part, for example; simply enter a "real" whole rest in one of the empty measures, and it won’t be removed from the system (and hence it won’t be separated from the bass-clef staff).

Note that you can tell Finale to ask you before removing each empty staff from the system, which means you can leave certain blank staves in place, if you want (the same result you get by inserting "real" whole rests).

After optimizing a staff system, Finale will display a non-printing Optimization icon in Page View to the right of the system.

• Optimize Staff System(s). Select this button if you want Finale to hide empty staves from the systems specified in the Staff System(s) __ through __ boxes. In Page View and in printouts, the empty staves won’t appear in the affected systems. If you optimize a completely empty staff system, Finale will still display the top staff, even though it’s blank.
• Remove Empty Staves. This option determines whether Finale will remove empty staves from the staff system. When this option is selected, Finale optimizes and removes empty staves from the staff system. When this option is not selected, Finale optimizes the staff systems, but keeps all staves—even if they’re empty.
• Ask Before Removing Staves. Finale uses this option only when Remove Empty Staves is selected. When Ask Before Removing Staves is selected and Finale finds an empty staff in the staff system, Finale asks you to confirm that you want the staff removed for that system. You can click on Yes All or No All to skip the remaining confirmations for all staves in all systems. When this option is not selected, Finale removes any empty staves from the staff system automatically.
• Keep At Least One Staff. This option is used only when Remove Empty Staves is selected. It determines whether at least one staff will remain in an optimized staff system—even if all staves are empty.
• Remove Staff System Optimization. Select this button if you want to restore all empty staves to the systems specified in the Staff System(s) __ through __ boxes. You might wish to remove optimization, for example, if the page layout has shifted, or you’ve added music in a previously empty measure, such that some of your music now doesn’t appear (because it falls on an optimized staff). Once you’ve made such staves reappear with this command, reoptimize the score to ensure that only truly empty staves are omitted.
• All Systems of Current Part/Score • System(s) __ Through __. Click on All Systems of Current Part/Score to optimize the entire document. In the System text boxes, specify the range of systems you want optimized. These numbers are inclusive; Finale optimizes the systems whose numbers appear in the text boxes and all systems in between. Leave the second box empty if you want to optimize to the end of the score.
• OK • Cancel. Click OK to return to the score, where Finale has hidden (or restored) the empty staves in the systems you specified. Click Cancel to return to the score without affecting optimization.

See Also:

Page Layout Tool