LilyPond Notation Reference: 4.6 Fitting music onto fewer pages

4.6 Fitting music onto fewer pages

Sometimes you can end up with one or two staves on a second (or third, or fourth…) page. This is annoying, especially if you look at previous pages and it looks like there is plenty of room left on those.

When investigating layout issues, annotate-spacing is an invaluable tool. This command prints the values of various layout spacing variables; for more details see the following section, Displaying spacing.

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4.6.1 Displaying spacing

To graphically display the dimensions of vertical layout variables that may be altered for page formatting, set annotate-spacing in the \paper block:

\book {
  \score { { c4 } }
  \paper { annotate-spacing = ##t }
}

All layout dimensions are displayed in staff-spaces, regardless of the units specified in the \paper or \layout block. In the above example, paper-height has a value of 59.75 staff-spaces, and the staff-size is 20 points (the default value). Note that:

1 point	= (25.4/72.27) mm
1 staff-space	= (`staff-size`)/4 pts
	= (`staff-size`)/4 * (25.4/72.27) mm

In this case, one staff-space is approximately equal to 1.757mm. Thus the paper-height measurement of 59.75 staff-spaces is equivalent to 105 millimeters, the height of a6 paper in landscape orientation. The pairs (a,b) are intervals, where a is the lower edge and b the upper edge of the interval.

4.6.2 Changing spacing

The output of annotate-spacing reveals vertical dimensions in great detail. For details about modifying margins and other layout variables, see Page layout.

Other than margins, there are a few other options to save space:

Force systems to move as close together as possible (to fit as many systems as possible onto a page) while being spaced so that there is no blank space at the bottom of the page.
\paper { system-system-spacing = #'((basic-distance . 0.1) (padding . 0)) ragged-last-bottom = ##f ragged-bottom = ##f }
Force the number of systems. This can help in two ways. Just setting a value, even the same value as the number of systems being typeset by default, will sometimes cause more systems to be fitted onto each page, as an estimation step is then bypassed, giving a more accurate fit to each page. Also, forcing an actual reduction in the number of systems may save a further page. For example, if the default layout has 11 systems, the following assignment will force a layout with 10 systems.
\paper { system-count = #10 }
Force the number of pages. For example, the following assignment will force a layout with 2 pages.
\paper { page-count = #2 }
Avoid (or reduce) objects that increase the vertical size of a system. For example, volta brackets for alternative repeat endings require extra space. If these endings are spread over two systems, they take up more space than if they were on the same system. As another example, dynamics that ‘stick out’ of a system can be moved closer to the staff:
\relative e' { e4 c g\f c e4 c g-\tweak X-offset #-2.7 \f c }

Alter the horizontal spacing via SpacingSpanner. For more details, see Changing horizontal spacing. The following example illustrates the default spacing:

\score {
  \relative {
    g'4 e e2 |
    f4 d d2 |
    c4 d e f |
    g4 g g2 |
    g4 e e2 |
  }
}

The next example modifies common-shortest-duration from a value of 1/4 to 1/2. The quarter note is the most common and shortest duration in this example, so by making this duration longer, a ‘squeezing’ effect occurs:

\score {
  \relative {
    g'4 e e2 |
    f4 d d2 |
    c4 d e f |
    g4 g g2 |
    g4 e e2 |
  }
  \layout {
    \context {
      \Score
      \override SpacingSpanner.common-shortest-duration =
        #(ly:make-moment 1/2)
    }
  }
}

The common-shortest-duration property cannot be modified dynamically, so it must always be placed in a \context block so that it applies to the whole score.

4.6 Fitting music onto fewer pages

4.6.1 Displaying spacing

See also

4.6.2 Changing spacing

See also