Formatting Parts

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Formatting Parts

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In Composer, a part displays the staves for one or more instruments or voices.  A part can be formatted and paginated independently of other parts and independently of the conductor's score.  

The conductor's score is itself also a part, which typically shows all of the instrument and/or vocal stave. You can format and print the conductor's score with a different paper size or orientation (landscape versus portrait) than the paper size and orientation that you intend for the individual instrument or vocal parts.

If you are pleased with the formatting of a part and would like to apply the same formatting to other parts, you can quickly do this with the Copy Formatting to Other Parts command in the Format menu. You can also save the formatting in a template file and later use the Format Part Using Template command to apply the saved formatting to a current part.

The topics that follow describe how you can individually format the following details of each part:

B816page setup: paper size and orientation; margins; and page numbering (determine the starting page number, and assignment of even or odd numbers to the left pages)
B816page title, headers and footers: text that is displayed on the first page, or at the top or bottom of each subsequent page of the part or score
B816overall font size: the point size used for notes and text, except where overridden for types of text or particular text objects
B816horizontal and vertical spacing: the amount of horizontal stretch or compression, and the minimum amount of vertical spacing between staves and between systems
B816font size for types of text: each category of text, such as lyrics and chord names, can have its own unique font size
B816show or hide types of music annotations: optionally hide lyrics, chord names, rehearsal marks, ornaments, or instrument sound change marks
B816show or hide instrument names: show long instrument names, or abbreviations, on every system of each page, or just the first system of each page, or not at all
B816Hide Resting Staves: optionally hide any staves in the part that have no notes and lyrics
B816"Easy Notes": display note letters (C, D, E, etc.) inside each notehead