When printing lead sheets, it would be a nice option to leave out rests/beats not needed in the lead-in bar. If I have an eighth note pick-up into bar #1, all I would need in the lead-in bar is an eighth rest and the eighth note. That would help solve the problem of notes getting crowded in the first line. Thanks, Ray

+1

In this example, I have also seen just the eighth note, without the leading eighth rest. But either way would be good. Perhaps an option in the Print settings to eliminate leading rests, or maybe in Preferences, Count-in/Metronome.

Yes please, certainly a good idea.

+1 for sure.

Something like this....

This is just one manifestation of the way "bars are constructed in printing in BIAB. All bars on a particular line, regardless of the number of notes or lyrics in the bar, are the same physical length. A bar containing a whole note, 4 quarter notes or even 1 eighth note has the same length as every other bar on the staff.

So the bar with your eighth note lead in is the same length as every other bar on the first line.

It has been the same FOREVER. I don't see any work around other than perhaps not printing the lead in bar even though it does have a note in it. It will mess up the count in somewhat, and you could always use the well documented pencil addition.

But I think it would be better to have BIAB dynamically allocate the bar length based on the number of notes or amount of lyric associated with the bar. No more fixed bar lengths.

As this is unlikely to happen anytime soon, perhaps we might find a way for music XML to transfer all of our music to a good print program. (I wish)

+1 Bumping, to see if this request can make it into an update.

If PGMusic can make the size of lead in bar dependent on the number of notes, it should be able to do it for any bar. Unless there is a significant change in the lead sheet coding, I just don't see that happening.

Would not printing the lead-in bar be an acceptable work around?

+1

There is another practical solution for this problem.

Most often in sheet music there are four measures in a line. BIAB requests us to enter where the chorus begins. Currently BIAB has only four words in its vocabulary: Intro, Chorus, Tag, Ending. Maybe we need a fifth word "Verse" and and a sixth word "Brigde"

Especially the words Chorus and Verse are important for formatting sheet music. The first measures of those should start at the beginning of a new line.

Pickup notes are on the previous line in the rightmost measures. They belong to the song and are mathematically part of the last measure in a song. So, if you have an eighth pickup note, the last measure only counts to "3 and" in a 4/4 time signature -- and should represent this in printing. There is no rest for the last eighth.