Bug in 2.0 github-musescore-musescore-5473249 when creating parts

• Jul 29, 2014 - 01:26

I was trying to create some lead sheets for a jazz group I'm playing with and ran into something odd. I realize I'm probably trying to push the envelope, but here's what happened. I've attached a file that illustrates a number of weird things.

1. Create a new score with only a piano part. Select key of F, 4/4 time, 4 bars.
2. Modify Style > Text and set Chord Symbol to be a system flag (so I only have to enter it once)
3. Entered an F major scale in treble and bass clef in quarter notes - 2 bars up, 2 bars down
4. Clicked the Concert Pitch button
5. Added a new Instrument - Bb Trumpet
6. Copied the piano treble bars and pasted to the Trumpet part
7. Added instruments: Eb Alto Sax, Bb Tenor Sax, Eb Bari Sax and Electric Bass
8. Copied the piano bass line and pasted to Electric Bass
9. Copied the piano treble line and pasted to the saxes, each in turn.
10. Clicked the Concert Pitch OFF, and adjusted the octaves on the sax parts, since they went way off the staff
11. Clicked File > Parts and clicked the New All button on the resulting dialog. Then clicked OK.

Parts were created.

I see the following issues (which are in the file attached):

1. The chords are not transposed for the instruments they should be transposed for. This may be a misunderstanding on my behalf. I was hoping to put the chords in once as a system entry, and have the chords transposed for the appropriate key on individual parts. The key signature IS correct on each part; the chord text is not transposed.

2. The piano part has two treble clefs. In what should be the bass clef, there are many leger lines.

3. The electric bass is also in treble clef, with many leger lines. Should be bass clef.

Attachment Size
Test_Transposing_Parts.mscz 7.2 KB

Comments

The clef bug is very simple to reproduce:

1) new score for piano
2) generate parts
3) view piano part

Result: it has two treble clefs rather than treble & bass

Apparently parts are generated with treble clefs right now. I'll submit this. EDIT: #28471: Parts always generated with treble clef

The chord symbol bug is different. In part, you might be seeing the result of #28401: Chord symbol entered after parts generated not transposed if score and part are at different concert pitch states. But even aside from that, I'd be kind of surprised if setting the System attribute on chord symbols worked as you hoped it might. Normally, this applies only to plain text and the text is copied verbatim to ll parts. I'd be surprised if any facility were included to transpose the chord. Really, the System flag should probably just be ignored for chord symbols.

I'll submit this bug as well, but don't be surprised if that doesn't turn out to be the "fix". EDIT: #28476: Chord symbols with System flag set do not transpose when propagated to parts

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

Thanks for the update and explanation.

In retrospect, the chord thing I tried doesn't make sense. I did find that approach mentioned in a search of the forums a while back, but it may have been for someone who was doing choral parts (or at least everything was concert pitch, which would work fine). I'm trying to be too productive without having a solid background in the fundamentals of the program.

It would be handy if chords could be treated as "first class elements" and handled separately (i.e. copy and paste with auto-transpose if pasted into a staff where the instrument is in a different key). I know this is a recurring request, because I've searched for hints on how to be more productive with chord entry.

In reply to by GuyWithDogs

Chords *are" "first class elements" in the sense I think you mean. Copy / paste *does* work, and transposition is handled appropriately. It's only the "System" flag that doesn't work, and that's because it is only meant for literal copying of text. As I said, it would be possible to make a special case exception for chord symbols so they aren't copied literally as the System flag normally does but are instead transposed, and once the other bug I mentioned is dealt with, I may see about this. But really, this is not how scores are generally created. If you want chords to appear on all parts, they are normally added to all staves. That's not just MuseScore; it's how most other software works as well, and how most published arrangements are typeset.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

By "first class element", I meant being able to copy the chords for a staff alone (without the notes from that staff), and then paste them in another staff, having any transposition happen. I haven't found a way to do that at all. I haven't figured out how to select all the chords from the piano part, for example, and paste them into any other part in my score. I can select chords in a bar individually, using Ctrl and clicking, and I can paste them bar by bar (and the transposition works - I just tried that). But I can't select two bars worth of chords and paste them into another staff.

And the whole thing about the system flag: yeah, my earlier comment was way off. In fact, I think if it worked like I was suggesting, THAT behavior would be problematic.

In reply to by GuyWithDogs

The thing to know about cop & paste is that for the most part, it doesn't work on "elements" but on "regions", defined as everything from a start beat position to an end beat position. There is no distinction between element types; everything in a region is copied. Well, some items are deliberately not copied, but chords are just as notes are.

In the experiment development builds for 2.0 - in other words, what you are currently testing - there is a new feature that does allow copying of selected individual elements as opposed to a whole region. Select the chords only (eg, ctrl-click them individually, or as of a couple of weeks ago, select a region, right click a chord, select all similar elements in range), copy, then click the location you'd like to paste to, paste. This works for chords, lyrics, articulations, and maybe a couple of other element types. In the case of lyrics and articulations, the destination had better have more or less the same rhythms or the paste won't make sense, but for chords, it copies them to the same beats, so it should always work.

But for the current supported / released version 1.3, the best way to copy chords is to copy the entire region then hit Del, which deletes the notes leaving the chords intact. If you already have notes you'd like to preserve, you'd have to use a scratch staff to paste into.

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