nikolas

Well.

Somebody asked this to me, not so long ago, and it could be tricky to think about it yourself...

Assuming you have a huge orchestra of 23 (for example) staffs. You will probably need to have a page at 50% or around that!

Now, 50% is kinda tiny, so usually, and especially in study scores you may very well go to the page layout tool ->page layout ->optimise all staff systems. This will delete from every system the staffs that contain no note information. Beware as if you have attached lines, or shapes they maybe gone as well.

Good thus far.

so the first page with the orchestral hit (for example), has all 23 staffs. 2nd page has only 17. Now the 50% of the pages is too small! so you go about making it 60%. And it fits.

Movgin to page 3, you have 15 staffs. With the 60%, as perviously entered. And this page holds 10 bars in total. So you go about to make that 60% into a 63%. Bang! The staffs are perfect and fit nicely in the page. but something is wrong: The bars, because of the added size, no longer fit in there! And damnit! Last bar on page 3 is the one that has 2 staffs. If you take this bar out, then if you try to optimise the staff system, you will be left with 13 staffs, again too small for the page.

So what to do in Finale:

When you optimise any staff system you delete, as mentioned previously, all unused staffs. But something else happens as well.

If you go to the staff tool, instead of a handle on every staff, you will see 2!!! The first one from above, moves all the staff universally, in all pages. The bottom one moves only that staff in that page. So in each page, you can actually place your staffs wherever is needed!

It is a big hussle, but sometimes it's just worth it!

Not only for the above reasons, but maybe for 1 page and only 1 page, you could have an extra high register in the Bassoon and extra low register in the clarinet, leaving too little size to place any dynamics! Moving the staff universally would leave too much space in all other pages, while locally would resolve the matter in seconds.