Steinberg Cubase 8 Manual

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Moving bar lines
1291
• To bring the bar back up to the previous staff, use the Glue tool to click on the 
last bar line on the upper of the two staves.
This in fact moves all measures in the lower staff to the upper staff.
Moving bar lines
The following operations can be made using the regular Object Selection tool or the 
Layout tool.
Moving a bar line
If you drag a bar line to the left or right, the surrounding bars are adjusted 
proportionally.
Moving bar lines on all staves
If you hold down [Alt]/[Option] when dragging a bar line, all bar lines below the one 
you drag are moved accordingly.
Moving a single bar line separately
If you hold down [Ctrl]/[Command] while dragging a bar line, the widths of the 
surrounding bars are not affected. 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Moving bar lines
1292
Making an indent on one line
• To create an indent, simply drag the first or last bar line on a staff.
The sizes of all measures are adjusted proportionally.
Before and after dragging the first bar line on the first staff
Making indents on several lines
If you hold down [Alt]/[Option] and drag the first or last bar line in a system, all 
following systems get the same indent. If you want all lines on all pages to be 
m o d i f i e d  i n  t h e  s a m e  w a y ,  h o l d  d o w n  [ A l t]/[Option] and drag the appropriate bar line 
on the first system of the score.
The last bar line in the score
Cubase attempts to move the last bar line and space the bars on the last line in a 
sensible way. But you can change this manually by dragging the last bar line, if you 
like. To change the type of the last bar line, double-click it and select the desired 
type.
Resetting bar spacing
To reset the bar spacing to standard values for several lines, proceed as follows:
PROCEDURE
1. Locate the first line for which you want to reset the bar spacing, and make one 
staff in that system active.
2. Select “Number of Bars” from the Advanced Layout submenu on the Scores 
menu.
3. Specify the number of bars that you already have on the line.
4. Click on “This Staff”.
Clicking “All Staves” resets the lines of all staves in the score.
5. Close the dialog.
The bar spacing is reset for the currently selected staff and all following staves.
RELATED LINKS
Using the Number of Bars dialog on page 1290 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Dragging staves
1293
Dragging staves
For the following operations, you can use the Object Selection tool or the Layout 
tool.
NOTE
Dragging staves can only be done in Page Mode.
Adding space between two grand staves
PROCEDURE
1. Locate the first staff in the lower of the two systems that you want to spread 
apart.
2. Click just to the left of the first bar line and keep the mouse button pressed.
The entire staff is selected.
3. Drag downwards until you have reached the desired distance between the 
staves and release the mouse button.
Before…
…and after dragging the upper system 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Dragging staves
1294
Setting the same distance between all grand staves
PROCEDURE
1. Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and drag the first staff of the second system, until 
you have reached the desired distance between this and the first system.
2. Release the mouse button.
The distances between all the systems are adjusted accordingly.
IMPORTANT
This operation affects the system you drag and all following systems.
Setting the distance between staves within a grand staff
PROCEDURE
1. Locate the lower staff in the grand staff that you want to spread apart.
2. Click just to the left of its first bar line and keep the mouse button pressed.
The entire staff gets selected.
3. Drag downwards or upwards and release the mouse button.
Dragging apart the staves in a piano system.
The new distance is set for the two staves.
Setting the same distance between staves in several systems
PROCEDURE
1. Hold down [Alt]/[Option] and drag the desired staff as described above.
2. Release the mouse button.
The corresponding staves in all following systems are moved accordingly. 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Dragging staves
1295
Moving one staff only
You may want to move one staff without affecting any other staff in any way:
PROCEDURE
1. Hold down [Ctrl]/[Command].
2. Drag any staff as described above.
Moving staves between pages
By using the “Move to Next/Previous Page” commands on the Staff context menu, 
you can quickly edit the page breaks.
Moving staves to the next page
PROCEDURE
1. Locate and activate the staff you want to move to the top of the next page.
This can be any staff except the first staff on the page.
2. Right-click on the blue rectangle to the left of the staff, and select “Move to 
Next Page” from the context menu.
The active staff (and any following staves on the page) are moved to the next page.
Moving staves to the previous page
PROCEDURE
1. Make the staff at the top of the page the active staff.
If any other staff is active, the “Move to Previous Page” option cannot be used. Also, 
the function does not work for the first staff on the first page.
2. Right-click on the blue rectangle to the left of the staff, and select “Move to 
Previous Page” from the context menu.
The active staff, and as many of the following staves as there are room for, are moved 
to the previous page. If the previous page is already “full”, nothing happens. 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Adding brackets and braces
1296
Adding brackets and braces
Brackets and braces are added on the Layout page of the Score Settings dialog. 
The settings you make are specific for the current layout, i.
 e. you can have different 
brackets or braces set up for different track configurations.
PROCEDURE
1. Open the Score Settings and select the Layout page.
In the track list, you can find columns for braces ( { ) and brackets ( [ ).
2. Click in one of the columns and drag downwards in the list to encompass the 
desired staves.
The column indicates graphically which staves are encompassed by the brace or 
bracket.
Click at the first staff for which you want a bracket or brace…
…and drag downwards in the list to enclose the desired staves.
3. Close the dialog.
The score is displayed with brackets or braces according to the settings you made.
• You can edit brackets and braces in the dialog by dragging the ends of the 
indicator in the list.
• To remove a bracket or brace, click on its indicator in the list.
You can automatically get broken bar lines based on the brackets you have added.
If the “Show Braces in Edit Mode” option is activated in the Preferences dialog 
(Scores–Editing page), brackets and braces are shown in Edit Mode as well.
RELATED LINKS
Breaking bar lines on page 1301
Displaying the Chord Symbols from the Chord Track
You can display the chord symbols from the chord track. Chord symbols can be 
viewed, edited, and printed out in Page Mode.
PROCEDURE
1. To show the Chord Track symbols, open the Scores menu, and from the 
Advanced Layout submenu select “Show Chord Track”.
On the Layout page of the Score Settings dialog you can specify which staff should 
display the chord track. 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Auto Layout
1297
2. To edit a chord symbol, double-click it.
NOTE
Moving chord symbols in the staff only affects the display. The position of the chords 
on the chord track remains unaffected.
RELATED LINKS
Layout settings on page 1279
Chord Functions on page 814
Auto Layout
This item on the Scores menu brings up a dialog with several options. Activating 
one of these makes the program “go through” the score and make adjustments to 
measure widths, staff distances, etc. Exactly which parts and properties of the score 
are affected depends on which option you activate/deactivate.
IMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANT
The automatic layout adjustments are done just as if you yourself had made them 
manually. This means that if there is something you do not like, you can always 
change it manually, as described above.
NOTE
You can also open the Auto Layout dialog by clicking the Auto Layout button on the 
extended toolbar. 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Auto Layout
1298
Move Bars
This option looks at the currently active grand staff, and attempts to adjust the 
measure widths, so that all notes and symbols get as much room as possible. The 
number of bars on the staff is not affected.
• You can perform this function for several staves in one go, by dragging a 
selection rectangle over their left edges, and then selecting Move Bars.
Move Staves
This changes the measure width (as with Move Bars) but also the vertical staff 
distance, of the active staff and all following staves.
Spread Page
This corrects the vertical layout of the staves on the current page, so that they “fit 
onto the page”. In other words, this removes white space at the bottom of the page.
Hide Empty Staves
This hides all empty staves, from the active staff to the end of the score. Note that 
polyphonic/split staves are in this case treated as one entity, if the clef in the upper 
system differs from that in the lower system. That is, a piano staff is considered 
“empty” only if there are no notes on either staff.
• If you have activated the “Hidden” option on the filter bar, hidden staves are 
indicated by a marker with the text “Hide:Name” (where “Name” is the staff 
name).
To display hidden staves, delete their “Hide” markers.
• If you activate the “Auto Layout: Don’t hide first staff” option in the 
Preferences dialog (Scores–Editing page), staves in the very first grand staff 
are not hidden, even if they are empty.
This is useful for example if you are creating an orchestra score, and want to 
show the complete “layout” of the orchestra on the first page of the score, 
without hiding anything.
All Pages
Activate this if you want to apply the options above to all pages. Please note that 
this setting is applied to the active staff and onwards. If you want all pages in the 
score to be affected, you have to make the very first staff (the first staff on the first 
page) the active staff. 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Auto Layout
1299
Move Bars and Staves
This is a combination of “Move Bars”, “Move Staves”, and “All Pages”, plus 
automatic calculation of the number of bars across the page – the function tries to 
optimize the number of bars across the page for each staff (with the maximum 
number of bars as set in the dialog).
Optimize All
All of the above in one fell swoop. This procedure might take some time but usually 
yields great results.
Other functions
In the lower part of the dialog, the following options are available:
Auto Space/Page Mode
The higher the value, the more space is allowed for each element in the score 
(and thus, the fewer the bars across the page).
Minimum Distance between Staves
When you use an Auto Layout function that moves staves (changes the 
vertical staff distance), this setting determines the minimum distance between 
the staves.
Minimum Distance between Grand Staves
This sets the minimum distance between Grand Staves in the same way.
Add to Auto Layout Distance
This number is added to the distance between staves that is added when you 
use any of the Auto Layout functions. The higher the number, the larger the 
distance between staves.
‘Spread Page’ Bottom Distance
This is added to the white space that appears on the bottom of a page when 
using the Spread Page functions.
Max. Number of Bars
This allows you to specify the maximum number of bars per staff when using 
the “Bars and Staves” or “Optimize All” functions.
NOTE
The functions “Move Bars” and “Move All Bars” (“Move Bars” + “All Pages”) can 
also be accessed via the Staff context menu (opened by right-clicking on the blue 
rectangle to the left of the active staff). 
						

							Designing your score: additional techniques
Reset Layout
1300
Reset Layout
This function allows you to delete invisible layout elements, which in effect restores 
the score to default settings.
PROCEDURE
1. Select “Reset Layout…” from the Scores menu.
The Reset Layout dialog appears.
2. Activate the items you want to delete or reset to standard settings.
3. Click on “This Staff” to clean up the active staff only, or on “All Staves” to 
clean up all staves in the score.
Reset Layout Options
Hidden Notes
Makes all hidden notes permanently visible again.
Hidden
Makes all other hidden objects permanently visible again.
Quantize
Deletes all Display Quantize elements.
Layout Tool
Resets all positions of notes, clefs, slurs and ties altered using the Layout tool.
Grouping
Resets the grouping under beams to standard values.
Cutflag
Deletes all cutflag events.
Stems/Beams
Resets the length of all stems and reset the slant of beams that have been 
manually adjusted.