Moving lyrics above the staff

• Dec 28, 2014 - 21:34

Is there a way in MuseScore 2 to move the lyrics above the staff? Specifically, I am trying to transcribe "O Come, All Ye Faithful" (Adeste Fideles). I am writing it out on two staves — SA & TB. In the Chorus the alto and bass lines are quite different from the melody, so the lyrics fall in different places. I would like to be able to put the Soprano lyrics above the staff, the alto and tenor lyrics between the two staves and the bass lyrics below the bass staff. I seem to be able to select a whole line of lyrics and, by holding down the Command Key (Macintosh), move the line to the left and right, but not up or down.

I have attached the file with one verse written in so you can see the chorus.

Thanks!

Attachment Size
O_Come,_All_Ye_Faithful.mscz 8.34 KB

Comments

Use different Styles for lyrics odd line than lyrics even lines, modify the y offset of the former to be above staff, which means negative values

This is something I've given some thought to, as I think it is probably the one thing I'd most like to see improved in a MuseScore 2.1 release when that happens. I think for now, the best thing is probably to select the lyrics you want to move and use the Inspector to move them. With any luck, you can select a bunch at once - shift+drag select right click one, select all in range selection, or in same voice, or same verse. Another possibility, instead of just changing the vertical offset in Inspector, is to create a new "lyrics above staff" text style with a negative vertical offset and assign that to these lyrics. But ideally, entering multiple verses would stack the verses upwards as you enter multiple verses. And the lyric margin settings from your general style settings would be honored backwards as well. Plenty of room for improvement here.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I haven't tried any of these yet except the one that suggests using different styles for odd and even lyric lines. That one doesn't work in this case because I only want it in one section, not for the whole file.

Also, I have tried selecting the whole line and moving it up as one unit, but it won't move up. I finally just moved the lyrics up word by word, but that isn't a very elegant way to do it and it is hard to line up the baselines on all those words so that the line of text is perfectly straight.

Thanks for all the input. I definitely need to learn more about the inspector in v.2!

In reply to by Jake Sterling

The Inspector is how you do almost everything "manual" in 2.0. Select the lyrics you want to move, then use the vertical offset field in the Inspector (toward the top) and decrease the value (negative values mean up).

BTW, even if you mvoe the lyrics one at a time, it is not hard at all to get them to line up. Just use the arrow key instead of the mouse. Ctrl+Up moves in 1sp increments. But it's much easier using Inspector, since you can easily move them all together, and better yet, you have a written record of how far you moved them, making it easy to repeat the same operation elsewhere.

In reply to by spojaw

Same as other elements - lots of ways.

The standard method of multiselect supported by most programs works in MuseScore - Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on Mac) elements one by one. You can also drag select if you use Shift; otherwise drag moves the canvas instead of selecting.

MuseScore also provides a range of selection options via Select item in the right click menu, lots of ways to select by element type, by staff, by system, by voices, by verse number, etc.

I know this is an old post - but you can drag a whole line of text up by:
1: selecting the text (until it turns blue)
2. hold ctrl down
3. select part of the highlighted text
4. let go of ctrl and drag.

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