Voice staves and dynamics, articulation, technique text, expressions etc

• Dec 25, 2015 - 17:30

I would like to suggest to add something like a "Voice" staff style.

Reason being that usually all articulation, dynamics, technique text, expressions and other stuff have to be written ABOVE the staff, since there are lyrics below.

It would speed up the general workflow for a, e.g., choir piece immensely!

What do you think? Or how do you approach this situation at the moment? Any special tricks to share?


Comments

That's a good idea. Ultimately, I think it should be possible to define all text (and perhaps general) style parameters on a per-staff basis.

For a choir piece, since all staves are vocal (except perhaps the accompaniment), why not simply change the style parameters to make those the default?

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

The choir example was a bit too extreme, but what about choir and ensemble?

I do play around with defining new text styles, which works incredibly wonderful in MuseScore - thanks for that!!! Now I am just wondering if it is possible to create a new set of dynamics (or also articulations) that could be automatically assigned to the new text style? That would probably cause double dynamics in the palette, but maybe it would be possible to assign some kind of indicator to the palette element, a color rectangle, e.g., that is co-defined in the new text-style...

...just drifting... and brainstorming... and whatever... sorry :-)

MuseScore is simply AWESOME!!

In reply to by rowild

Even for plain choir it won't fully work, in a closed SATB, with lyrics in between the staves.

Detecting existing lyrics and then automagicall switching from below to above staff might work, esp. as lyrics above staff are not really supported yet (they are possible, but still reserve space below the staff)

I find dynamics above the stave useful in piano/vocal scores. I made my own custom palette
containing the the "standard" ppp thru fff, the "high" dynamics and a few "low" words such as "decresc.", "legato", "meno", "più" etc.

! placed a few notes on a score, added one of each of the common dynamics to the notes then altered the properties of the dynamics (Text Properties ->Vertical set to minus 2 suits my work). Then I took the standard Dynamics palette and saved it under a new name to create a custom palette and [Ctrl][Shift]-dragged the "high" dynamics etc. into the new palette.

Although I find this most useful in piano/vocal I sometimes find that in piano pieces alone they are useful since you might want a dynamic in the normal place in the RH stave and then a new dynamic a few notes later floating just above the LH stave.

In reply to by underquark

Thank you, @underquark, for your example! Following your description and reading up on this possibility here: https://musescore.org/en/handbook/custom-palettes, I tried the same, but unfortunately MuseScore dies.

It seems to be a bug reported here: https://musescore.org/en/node/91536#comment-405366. The report says Winows 7, I myself am on a Mac - which operationg system are you working on and what version of MuseScore do you use, since it seems to be working in your case?

Greetings!
Robert

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I just found that the problem actually only arises, when the new palette has "More elements..." activated on creation. If "More Elements" is deactivated, it works.

So to reproduce the program failure in MuseScore 2.0.2 or 2.1, do this:

1. create a new palette
2. activate the "More Elements" checkbox in the dialogue window
3. click arrow left of newly created palette to open it (three question marks should be there, nothing else)
4. drag over any other input element, be it a dynamic, a breath mark, whatever

Expected result:
The new element should be shown in the new palette.

What really happens:
The program crashes.

Workaround:
Don't check "More Elements", when creating the new category. As soon as there is one element in the category, "More Elements" can be activated and the program won't crash.

Forgive me, Marc, for not adding my file, but there is just no point in doing so. Any new file will do.

Thank you!

In reply to by rowild

Confirmed. Also seems to only apply to brand new empty palettes; it seems to work fine if the palette is already populated before enabled More Elements. Well, not "fine" - the palette entires get messed up, with empty cells created. But no crash at least.

Can you file an official bug report via the issue tracker (see Help / Report a Bug from within MuseScore)?

In reply to by underquark

@underquark: in my case, the new positioning from the palette is not "memorized". Whenever I place a "p" from the newly created (and saved) palette, it assigns the element to the Text Style "Dynamics".

Do you have any idea, what I am doing wrong? I also tried to create a new Text Style, but fail in assinging it to the new palette as its default Text Style... (if that is even possible...)

In reply to by rowild

Something like this. You can also right-click in turn on each item in the palette and set their properties to something like Y= -1 to display them as elevated in the palette. You could add words like Div., Divisi, (spoken), etc. MuseScore is extremely customisable in this way. Once you have your palette just the way you like it I would suggest saving it and also keeping a backup in case there comes a day when you ever need to do a complete re-install or if you change machines.

Vocal_Custom_Palette.png

In reply to by underquark

Hi, @underquark! Thanks for your advise again and for posting an image!

Is there a reason, why you have "ppp" and others twice in your palette? (I mean to realize that the second set is also placed a bit higher in the gutter of the palette...)

Maybe that's overkill, but is there a sharing place for "useful palettes"?

Greetings!

In reply to by rowild

The regular ppp etc. place the dynamic below the stave as per default. The higher-up ppp (and its friends) place the dynamic above the stave. They are all together in the same palette since I frequently use them both in the same piece (piano or piano/vocal).

Note that to get them to behave that way you have to first place ordinary dynamics, then adjust their properties then drag them to the custom palette. And, to get them to appear that way in the palette itself you have to right-click on the dynamic within the palette and adjust its vertical properties (set Y to -1 or whatever).

Yes, a gallery of custom-made palettes is a good idea. Users could create a palette and attach an image of it as well as the palette file itself. The image used in my post, above, is an old one and my palette is still evolving.

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