A few suggestions

• Oct 28, 2014 - 18:41

I've been using 2.0 for a little while, and I think it's a great improvement over 1. I have a few suggestions:

1. If you split a measure, I think the second one (generally a pickup) should be automatically omitted from the measure numbering.

2. Notes placed on ledger lines are spaced farther apart than those in the staff. This looks bad, and other notation programs space everything equally.

3. When you make a grace note, I think it should automatically place it on the note above rather than at the same pitch as the note which follows. Most graces are above, some are below, and this change will save the step of adjusting at least half of them.

4. Also, if you have two or more graces which precede a note, you have to click on the note for every grace (thee grace notes, three clicks on the note, three clicks on the grace). It would be easier to just select the note once and click the grace you want multiple times. Keeps you from mousing back and forth.

5. There still seems to be no way to properly notate harmonics and stopped harmonics on stringed instruments. The diamond-shaped noteheads should be hollow, like half-notes, regardless of their duration. Instead they act like regular noteheads, and turn black on anything less than a half-note. I write for an instrument that uses harmonics frequently, and this is a serious shortcoming. Also, you should be able to use multiple types of noteheads within chords, to indicate stopped harmonics. You can work around this by assigning different voices, but it would be easier to just click on a notehead and simply change it.

6. Certain lines (crescendo, decrescendo, and sometimes slurs) radically change position after a file is saved and than opened again. Sometimes a line will appear several measures before or after where it was originally placed. The problem is consistent, and with longer pieces, very inconvenient.

Thanks for the great work!

Comments

• Oct 28, 2014 - 19:00

Regarding 1. - if you are using split and join measures to produce unmetrical music, which I and other users are doing for liturgical music, having them not counted in the bar numbering would be a big nono!

Creating an anacrusis is probably NOT the most general use case IMO!

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 19:02

Thanks for your comments!

1) is an interesting suggestion, but I'm not sure your assumption is correct. The main purpose of split has nothing to do with creeating pickups, and indeed, it wouldn't have occurred to me to use it for that purpose. Seems if you do that, you are stuck with an extra partial measure you then need to delete, so changing the actual duration in Measure Properties is the more direct method. That said, it may well be true that for the actual intended purposes of the split measure, it *does* make sense to exclude the second from the numbering. EDIT: but see above, maybe not. I was thinking of another use case: splitting a measure in two to facilitate creating a mid-measure repeat or other similar marking.

2) is correct behavior according to some sources, but maybe not others. There is a general reluctance to have too many options, but perhaps someday if we implement an "advanced settings" facility (which has been discussed from time to time) this would make a good candidate. Meanwhile, you *can* shorten ledger lines (in Style/General/Notes), which will indirectly reduce the spacing required for notes with ledger lines, and also increase the minimum distance between notes (in Style/General/Measure), which will increase the spacing for notes without ledger lines, and some combination of these settings may give you the effect you want.

3) I kind of agree, but in my world, grace notes *below* are much more common. So if we do it your way, you create twice as much work for me, and vice versa. So maybe we are better off as we are?

4) In general, when something is added to the score, it is automatically selected, and especially in light of 3), this is probably a good thing here. Note you can use the keybaord rather than mouse to return focus, although the navigation is less than obvious dueo to how these things are implemented. Making it so adding a grace note works with a grace note currently selected (with the same behavior as if the main note was selected) is a nice idea, and worth submitting as an official feature request. Use Help / Report a Bug to reports bugs or request features, one at a time (ie, not a combined post like this).

5) First, you *can* have different noteheads within the same chord. Simply select the notehead, double click the notehead in palette or use Inspector. Also, you can force the hollow notehead for quarter notes and less also using the Inspector. Just select "Half" (or whatever) under Head type. So you can get the effect you want already.

6) sounds like a bug, but we'd need specific steps to reproduce it. The one case I know of that is reproducible is if you do the same while in Continuous View and your hairpins have had their positions adjusted manually - see #37691: Corrupted Horizontal Position of Hairpins ( saving from Continuous View ).. This was just reported yesterday, but hopefully will be fixed soon, as it seems a pretty obvious issue. If you are seeing this type of behavior in *other* situations *not saving manually adjusted hairpins in Continuous View), please try to find a score and specific series of steps to reproduce the problem, then report it via Help / Report a Bug.

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 19:38

I tried saving from page view, and the position of the hairpins was not corrupted. Thanks!

And thanks for the harmonic trick. Although when you have to continually write things like this, it is rather tedious:

Harmonics.png

Regarding 3), above or below, but graces are rarely the same pitch as the note which follows. Automatically above OR below would at least save time for someone — and maybe this could be a preference.

Also, regarding 1), could be set as a preference?

Thanks for being so responsive. Sibelius has never replied to me, on any matter.

Attachment Size
Harmonics.png 61.2 KB

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 20:39

Yes, the open source software community does tend to quite responsive!

Regarding the harmonics, you can set the noteheads for multiple notes at once by simply selecting them all. So doing the passage above should be no more tedious than doing one. Since that same notehead can be used for other purposes, I am not sure it is a good diea to change the type automatically. But perhaps a plugin could do the job of setting both the head group and type so that this specific use case is made even easier.

As for the split measure function, I still don't understand how or why you are using the split measure function for an anacrusis. That seems to be a case of driving a nail with a screwdriver to me. Again, "Measure Properties" is the proper way to set an anacrusis (assuing you didn't already set it in the Create New Score wizard), and that is also where you find the box to exclude the measure. So if you create an anacrusis the normal way, both settings you might want are within a centimeter of each other. And since the dialog is used for many other purpsoes, I don't think it makes sense to set the "Exclude" option every time you change the actual duration. So unless there is some use case I am not seeing, I don't really see a good reason to add more options here.

If you are still thinking it could help somehow, could you explain in more detail what you are doing and how you are doing it, and why that seems better than using Meausre Properties?

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 21:17

I'm not referring to an anacrusis, which refers only to the pickup(s) before the first measure, but the pickups that occur after/before sections or repeats. It's easier to just select the last rest and split the measure. The only reason I have to go to measure properties is to exclude the measure from the count.

I could just go to measure properties, but it's more work because you have to change the number of notes in the measure, and then exclude it from the count. Well, I guess it's almost the same amount of work, but it would be easier to just split the measure and have done with it.

Also, you can set the notehead for a range of notes by selecting them and then changing the notehead, but you have to change the "head type" individually — which is quite tedious.

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• Oct 29, 2014 - 02:01

Regarding split measure - OK, yes, sounds like you are talkng about the use case I mentioned (splitting a measure to facilitate mid-measure repeats, or possibly line breaks). Would be interesting to know how common that is versus other uses of this function. I still don't like the idea of options that change the behavior of the program; I'd rather find the best default and go with it. Not there aren't exceptions.

As for changing head type - what makes you say you have to change them individually? It should work to change multiple notes at once the same as for notehead group. What goes wrong when you try? Just select a bunch of notes, change type in Inspector. Works for me. You just have to be careful to select only notes, not other types of objects. Ctrl-clicking the notes individually does this, as does range select followed by right click / Select / All Similar Elements in Range Selection.

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• Oct 29, 2014 - 16:47

Yes, see my comments just above. When selecting a range, you have different element types selected, the Inspector shows only the options common to all of them. But you can then right click one of the notes and choose Select / All Similar Elements in Range Selection, and this will cut out everything but the notes. Now the Inspector is your friend, and I guess Bob's your uncle (so the saying goes).

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 20:47

Changing the default pitch of a 'grace note' doesn't make sense to me; even if it's true that most are either above or below, they are not necessary at a specific interval. Maybe most of the time they are a second away from the main note, but that's hardly uniform. Leaving them the same pitch as the main note seems like the best neutral solution.

That said, an easier way to create multiple 'grace notes' at once would be nice.

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 21:16

Right now, there does not seem to be an active shortcut for creating grace notes, although the Preferences dialog kind of makes it seem like there should be. Even if you define a shortcut, it never gets handled. Maybe if we do ever add shortcuts, we could make separate ones for "add grace note above" and "add grace note below".

Meanwhile, though, I still kind of feel if we made the default when adding a grace note via the palette be to add it below the note, half the world would applaud, but half would complain that we just made their job twice as hard. And vice versa. I think we'd have to be pretty confident we were making the right default. And given the reluctance to add more options, this doens't seem important enough to want to do so here.

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 21:20

I like the idea of a shortcut for "add grace above" and "add grace below". The fact is, though, grace notes are either above or below, but almost never the same pitch as the note that follows. Either way, you would cut the amount of adjusting the graces in half if you defaulted in either direction. As it stands, you have to adjust all of them no matter what.

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• Oct 28, 2014 - 22:57

Yes, but adjusting them all one click means a total of N adjustments for N grace notes, whereas not adjusting half of them at all but needing to adjust the other half *two* clicks because we guessed wrong ends up *also* being N adjustments for N grace notes. So it's a wash unless there really is evidence that most grace notes are either below or above.

Anyhow, you've got me curious about these issues, so I'm looking at what makes sense.

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• Oct 29, 2014 - 01:40

There are indeed several types of grace notes, but none of them work if trying to apply the consecutively - they all require you to click the main note again. I already have a fix for that. Right now Edit / Preferences / Shortcuts lets you sert shortcuts for several different types of grace notes, but none of them work. I'd probably remove all but basic appoggiatura and acciccatura from the shortcut list, and leave "/" as the default shortcut for the latter.

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• Oct 29, 2014 - 20:03

MuseScore 1.3 is particularly appreciable for its simplicity of use. I feel that adding too many bells and whistles to 2.0 would be going to kill that simplicity and make MuseScore somewhat worse than it is now. Please, be really, really careful in choosing what's worth adding and what is not. In many cases, the fewer, the better.

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• Oct 29, 2014 - 23:06

I am curious how well acquainted you are with 2.0 Beta 1 and if you believe anything currently implemented in Beta 1 and the Nightlies falls into the category you're referring to.

A major release of any software - i.e., an incremented numeral to the left of the decimal point rather than to the right of it - by nature has some significant differences from the previous release. I strongly believe 2.0 is a very substantial improvement over 1.3 - and that its improvements have definitely not come at the expense of 'simplicity'. I cannot see how new functionalities that are tangible, numerous and productivity-oriented - presented in a stable interface that's a modest extension of the familiar and accepted one - could render a product 'somewhat worse' than the old one. (And regarding 'bells and whistles' - I don't believe that there's anything in the core program that meets that definition; that's what Plugins are for!)

I'm an end-user here - no coding knowledge whatsoever - but I have lengthy professional experience as a software troubleshooter. I believe that far more often than not, users' complaints about a software program are rooted in misunderstanding of 'best practices' - the procedures (and the logic behind following them) that can be predicted to give the most efficient results in the quickest time. In my experience, many people just don't want to be bothered to read Handbooks or look at Help utilities; instead, when they get into a jam, they want to be given the easy fix - not a genuine explanation that might avert the same problem the next time and could even apply, by extension, to a similar potential pitfall in the future.

I really am sympathetic to the idea that software needs to be 'user friendly' - but, after all, people have different levels of exposure, experience and aptitude. There's no 'one size fits all', and something that's piece-of-cake easy to one person will be torture to another. Nobody wants a learning curve that's dauntingly steep, but neither is the answer to drop to the level of users who are uncomfortable learning anything new. I think the development team has done a brilliant job in balancing these concerns with their goal of creating and delivering a product that produces admirable results via an interface that I'd honestly describe as elegant.

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• Oct 30, 2014 - 12:32

Thanks for the kind words, stevebob.

As a part of the development team, I'd like to reassure you Aldo, that we do try our best to add only the features that will benefit most of the users and that we definitely want to stick to: "A good looking inexpensive software to create easily the beautiful sheet music you need".
If you tried the beta or nightlies and encountered anything that doesn't fit this mantra, then we can do better together. Feel free to open a new post and explain what was added and doesn't fit.

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