5.5 Placement of objects

There are some objects in musical notation that belong to the staff and there are other objects that should be placed outside the staff. These are called within-staff objects and outside-staff objects, respectively.

Within-staff objects are those that are located on the staff – note heads, stems, accidentals, etc. The positions of these are usually fixed by the music itself – they are vertically positioned on specific lines of the staff or are tied to other objects that are so positioned. Collisions of note heads, stems and accidentals in closely set chords are normally avoided automatically. There are commands and overrides which can modify this automatic behavior, as we shall shortly see.