Barline

Bar lines are automatically placed by MusiCAD as soon as a bar is full. How many notes fit in a measure is determined by the time signature. We call these types of barlines that you do not have to set manually soft barlines.

Besides soft bar lines, there are also hard bar lines. You set these hard barlines manually. For example, you use a hard barline with a pickup. If the bar is not yet full after one or more notes, you can force the end of the bar with a hard bar line. After such a hard bar line, MusiCAD continues to divide bars with soft bar lines. You can recognize hard bar lines on the notation bar by the object handle (blue marking).

With the bar line menu you can easily add and/or change bar lines of the desired type. At the end of a part or part thereof you often want a different type of bar line; double, bold or with repeat characters. These types of bar lines are also hard bar lines. In addition to hard barlines, there are also a hard line break and a hard page break, for explicitly indicating where you can want a new line or new line respectively.

Finally, conditional line breaks and page breaks can be inserted. Conditional line breaks within the [Line justification] area are ignored. Similarly, a conditional page transition is only honored outside the [Options|Format|Page justification] area.

You can adjust the thickness/width of barlines under [Options|Format|Barline weight]

Keyboard shortcuts for working with barlines:

<:>	Barline menu of the button bar.
<\>	Place a hard barline where the note cursor is. Repeating <\> in the same place produces different types of hard bars (single, double, left-bold, right-bold, double-bold). Can also be used to indicate measurements.
<ctrl-Enter>	Force line break to a new staff. On the notation bar such a hard (explicit) line break can be found as a single dotted line downwards.
<shift-i>	Conditional line break.
<shift-ctrl-Enter>	Force a page break (hard page). This can be seen on the notation bar as a double dotted line.
<shift-j>	Conditional page break.
<;>	Repeat marks at hard barline. Has the effect that 4 different patterns can be placed successively at a hard barline set with <\>: :|| :||: ||: and || after which the cycle repeats.
<x>	Make a hard bar line/rest/text invisible (see also enharmonic exchange).
<ctrl-3>	Adjust automatic bar numbering: This is necessary, among other things, after a pickup bar. MusiCAD always starts the automatic numbering at bar 1. You do not want to count an pickup bar, so if you want the bar numbering to start at the first real bar, you must set the bar numbering manually
<alt->	Reduce whitespace above bar when cursor points to a hard line break.
<alt->	Increase whitespace above a bar when the cursor points to a hard line break.
<alt->	Move hard barline to the right.
<alt->	Move hard barline to the left.

You can get notation without bar lines with the time signature 1/1, the time signature itself can be made invisible with <x> (MusiCAD continues to work with barlines behind the scenes).

See also

• page break
• line break
• barline menu
• FAQ - barlines