Staves

This entry contains information on adding, moving, spacing, deleting, hiding, and recovering staves. See also: Staff lines; Staff names; Groups; Staff size.   

When selecting a staff, you can either click the staff’s handle or the body of the staff itself (to the right of the clef, time and key signature). Drag-enclose or shift-click to select as many staff handles as you want. (You can also shift-click selected staves to remove them from the selection.)

To add or insert a single staff

1. Click the Staff Tool  . The Staff Menu appears and handles appear on every staff.
2. To add a new staff, from the Staff Menu choose New Staves, then click OK. A staff appears below the existing staves. Or, in Scroll View double-click in the where you want to add the staff. If you wish to use the Setup Wizard to add staves, choose New Staves (with Setup Wizard). To insert a new staff between two staves, select the staff handle that you want the new staff placed above, then choose New Staves and click OK (or, double-click between the staves in Scroll View). Finale moves the existing staves down to make room for the new staff.

To move staves

1. Click the Staff Tool  . The Staff Menu appears and handles appear on every staff.
2. Select the staff or staves to be moved.
3. To move a staff or staves, drag the handle of one of the selected staves. Finale adjusts the staves differently, depending on whether you’re in Scroll or Page View, whether Special Part Extraction is selected in the Edit Menu, and whether the staff systems were optimized using Page Layout Tool. For details, see Staff Tool.

Note: If a staff system has been optimized using the Page Layout Tool, two handles will appear on each staff in the optimized staff system in Page View. Drag the bottom staff handle to adjust the staff’s position only in the current staff system in Page View (drag the top handle to adjust the position of the staff in all staff systems in Page View). The position of the staff in Scroll View is unchanged.

To delete staves

1. Click the Staff Tool  . The Staff Menu appears and handles appear on every staff.
2. Select the handles of the staff or staves to be deleted. Ensure no measures or portions of measures are selected.
3. To remove selected staves without adjusting the position of the remaining staves, choose Delete Staves from the Staff Menu. To delete the selected staves and reposition any remaining staves, choose Delete Staves and Reposition from the Staff Menu. Finale deletes the selected staves, and places the top staff of the remaining staves in the former position of the top staff that was deleted, followed by any other staves.
4. To restore the deleted staves, immediately choose Undo from the Edit Menu.

To add evenly spaced staves

1. Click the Staff Tool  . The Staff Menu appears.
2. To add staves, choose New Staves from the Staff Menu. Or, select the staff handle you want the new staves to be placed above, then choose New Staves from the Staff Menu. The New Staves dialog box appears.
3. Enter the number of new blank staves into the Number of Staves text box.
4. To place the new staves closer to or farther apart than those already in the score, enter a value (in measurement units) into the Topline to Topline Distance text box (the distance between the top lines of each added staff). You’ll usually enter a negative number, because you’re measuring down from the top line of the previous staff.
5. Click OK. Finale adds the specified number of new blank staves below the bottom staff, or inserts blank staves below the top selected staff in the score, using the distance specified in the New Staves dialog box, and adjusting the staves below to make room for the newly inserted staves.

To space existing staves evenly

1. Click the Staff Tool  . The Staff Menu appears.
2. Choose Respace Staves from the Staff Menu. The Respace Staves dialog box appears.
3. Leave Keep Current Position selected if you don’t want to move the top staff. To place the top staff a fixed distance from the top of the screen, click to select Top Staff Position: Set to, then enter the distance (in measurement units) into the Set to text box. To reposition the top staff by a percentage of its current position, click Top Staff Position: Scale to, then enter a percentage into the Scale to text box. For example, to place the staff twice as far down, enter 200 (%) in the text box.
4. To maintain a fixed distance between the remaining staves, click to select Distance Between Staves: Set to, and enter the distance (in measurement units) into the Set to text box. To place staves closer together or farther apart proportionally, click to select Distance Between Staves: Scale to, then enter a percentage into the Scale to text box. This will preserve the relative distance between each staff. For example, if you created a larger-than-usual gap between the woodwind staves and the strings, and you entered 50 (%) in the text box, Finale would make extra space, but both the gap and the distances between staves within the woodwind or string sections would be half as large.
5. Click OK to confirm your changes.

To hide staves

See Hiding staves.

To hide (or show) staff-related items

Finale gives you staff-by-staff control over the display of such staff-associated items as measure numbers, clefs, repeat brackets, and so on. For example, you probably don’t need measure numbers to appear in both the top and bottom staves of your piano part, so you can hide the measure numbers on one staff. See also Global Staff Attributes, where you can set the staff attributes for a number of staves at one time.

1. Click the Staff Tool  . The Staff Menu appears.
2. Select a staff handle, then choose Edit Staff Attributes from the Staff Menu. (Or, double-click a staff handle, or a staff name handle.) Or, choose Edit Staff Attributes from the Staff Menu without selecting a staff. The Staff Attributes dialog box appears. To display the attributes of another staff, choose a staff from the Staff Attributes for popup menu. (Or, use the arrow controls to select a staff from the Staff Attributes for popup menu.)
3. Change the settings in the Staff Attributes dialog box to show or hide items for the staff. In the Items to Display section, select or deselect as many checkboxes as you wish. For details, see Staff Attributes dialog box.
4. Click OK to confirm your settings.

To recover deleted staves

Once you delete a staff, you can restore it by choosing Undo (as many times as necessary) from the Edit Menu, or choose Undo List from the Edit Menu and highlight Staff/Group delete and click OK. Actions done after the staff was deleted will also be undone. See Undo for more information.

To set the attributes for a staff

See also Global Staff Attributes, where you can set the staff attributes for a number of staves at one time.

1. Click the Staff Tool  . The Staff Menu appears.
2. Select a staff handle, then choose Edit Staff Attributes from the Staff Menu. (Or, double-click a staff handle, or a staff name.) Or, choose Edit Staff Attributes from the Staff Menu without selecting a staff. The Staff Attributes dialog box appears. If you didn’t select a staff before entering this dialog box, choose a staff from the Staff Attributes for popup menu. (Or, use the arrow controls to select a staff from the Staff Attributes for popup menu.)
3. Change settings in the Staff Attributes dialog box to define the staff’s characteristics. For details, see Staff Attributes dialog box.
4. Click OK to confirm your settings.