Optimizing systems

In published full scores, it’s customary to omit from a system any staves consisting entirely of rests, which results in a more compact and readable score. This is sometimes called "French scoring." In Finale, this process of suppressing the printing of empty staves within each system is called optimizing systems. When you optimize a completely empty staff system, Finale will still display the top staff, even though it’s blank.

Optimizing systems in Finale has another important benefit: it permits staves to be independently movable in Page View. Under normal circumstances, you can only move, respace, or rearrange staves in Scroll View, using the Staff Tool. If you have optimized a system, however, you’ll find that the Staff Tool works in Page View, too, letting you vary the positioning and spacing of staves as they’ll appear on the printed page. You can even regroup and rebracket them. If you just want to respace one system, use the To create variable-distance systems command.

To optimize all (or specified) systems

1. Click the Page Layout Tool  .
2. From the Page Layout Menu, choose Optimize Staff Systems. A dialog box appears, letting you specify the range of systems to be optimized. If you only want to optimize some of the systems, enter their numbers in the boxes. You could also drag-select the systems to optimize before entering the Optimize Staff Systems dialog box, and Finale will display your selected systems. To optimize the entire score, click on Whole Document.
3. Check Optimize Staff Systems and any additional features below. See Staff System Optimization dialog box for details.
4. Click OK (or press return). When Finale’s done, look at the staves in Page View. You’ll see that every staff remaining in each system has music on it, because the empty staves have been hidden.
5. Update the layout using Update Layout in the Edit Menu. Finale has locked in the optimized staff configuration. If you return to Scroll View and add some music to a staff in a system that no longer appears in Page View (because it’s been optimized), the staff won’t reappear. If you want to edit, reformat, enlarge, or reduce your music, remove optimization before you do it, and reapply optimization when you’re finished. For this reason, it’s best to optimize just before printing, after the piece has been formatted, proofread, and given its final layout.

To remove staff optimization from all (or specified) systems

1. Click the Page Layout Tool  .
2. From the Page Layout Menu, choose Optimize Staff Systems. A dialog box appears, letting you specify the range of systems from which you want to remove optimization. If you only want to remove optimization from some of the systems, enter their numbers in the text boxes. You could also drag-select the systems before entering the Optimize Staff Systems dialog box, and Finale will display your selected systems. If you click on Whole Document, Finale will remove optimization from all systems.
3. Click Remove Staff System Optimization. Click OK.

To optimize staff by staff

If you only want to remove some blank staves from a system, you can use this method, in which Finale will ask you to confirm the removal of each staff.

1. Click the Page Layout Tool  .
2. From the Page Layout Menu, choose Optimize Staff Systems. The Staff System Optimization dialog box appears.
3. Select how you want this system Optimized; whether you want empty staves removed, if you want to be asked before a staff is removed, and if you want to keep at least one staff. See Staff System Optimization dialog box. 
4. Click OK (or press return) to continue. If you selected Ask Before Removing Staves, the Remove Staff dialog box appears asking whether you want each empty staff removed.
5. Click Yes or No. If you click Yes, the staff will be removed. If you click No, the staff will be optimized, but will remain in the score.

To remove staves from a single system

Similar to the method above (see To optimize staff by staff), this method allows you to specify what staff to remove, instead of asking about all staves. Keep in mind that this powerful method will remove the staff from the system regardless of whether it contains music.

1. Click the Page Layout Tool  .
2. From the Page Layout Menu, choose Optimize Staff Systems. A dialog box appears, letting you specify the range of systems to be optimized. If you only want to optimize some of the systems, enter their numbers in the boxes. If you click on Whole Document, Finale will optimize all staves. (Finale optimizes to the end if the Through box is blank or 0.)
3. Click on Optimize but uncheck Remove Empty Staves. You’ll be removing the staves individually later.
4. Click OK (or press return).
5. Click the Staff Tool  . Two handles will appear on each staff.
6. Click the bottom handle on a staff. Shift-click to select additional staves.
7. Press Delete to remove the selected staff or staves, in that system only, while repositioning the remaining staves. Press shift-Delete to remove the selected staff or staves without repositioning the remaining staves.