Editing Question & those darn rests!!
Okay, I have my melody line written out, but go back and find that I messed up 1 measure. 3/4 time signature, I have a dotted quarter followed by a quarter followed by an eighth which is tied to a half note in the next measure. It should be dotted quarter followed by an eighth followed by a quarter tied to the half note.
When I try to change the errant quarter note to an eighth , it inserts an eighth rest that I cannot erase and bumps the quarter that was there to the next measure.
So I back up and and change the eighth to a quarter first, but it still inserts a rest at the end of the measure and bumps the eighth note to the next measure and I cannot erase the eighth rest. :(
Nothing I have tried has made my edits without adding rests that I don't want. There MUST be a way to make this change without rewriting the whole last half of my melody line, but I haven't been able to find it.
Yes, I am brand new to this program, there are many things I like about it very much, but dealing with the automatic rests is not one of them. *sighs*
Any suggestions/help would be most appreciated!!
Comments
Step one: read the Handbook section on note entry.
Step two: watch the tutorial videos on note entry
Both can be found via the main MuseScore.org page.
They explain how to enter notes and rests pretty well. The bottom line is, if your time signature is 3/4, then MuseScore will not let you make changes hat break that. So if you lengthen a note, something else gets shorted to make up for it, and vice versa.
You dom't .erase" the eight rest that got inserted when you shorted the note on the and of two - you simply enter a new note thee, or copy some other note there. Basically, you don't erase rests - you replace hem by noes. Which, if you think about it, is how music works. Rests are the absences of notes. You don't erase silence - you replace it with sound.
If the problem is that your melody is shifted to the right (and you want to delete the rest to move it left), just mark, cut and paste the melody.
In reply to Step Three: cut and paste the rest of the melody by Fermate
Thanks Marc, I had read the handbook but perhaps I missed something. I do understand time signatures and that you must have 3 full beats to a measure. I had 3 full beats before I needed to switch the position of an eighth note and a quarter note. I was trying to replace the rest with notes, but it just kept moving the rest forward, not replacing it with a note.
Thank you Fermate!!! Yes, it kept shifting that rest to the right rather than replace it and I never thought about cutting and pasting. Thank you so much!!
Still it would make much more sense to be able to replace the rest. I'll go back and read again and see if I missed something.
Thanks for the quick responses!! :)
In reply to Thanks Marc, I had read the by SueGale
I don,t know if the handbook alone explains everything, but combined with the video tutorials, you get a lot of useful information. There's een one video tutorial specifically on the this exact topic, although I think you might have to hint a bit on YouTube to find it.
But anyhow, again, you *can* replace the rest - by entering a note in its place. Whether you enter it by typing, clicking, or copy/paste is immaterial. The way you replace a rest is to put something else there. It's also how you replace notes, BTW - by entering new notes, or rests, in that same time position.
The basic model is that a note (or rest), once entered, has a specific time position, and nothing you do elsewhere in the score will change the time position of that note. If you want to change the time position of a note, you cut and paste it elsewhere, you don't try to trick it into moving by fiddling with what came before it.
While this is different from how text editors, music is not text, either - time is important in music in a way it isn't with text. Anyhow, if you you search the forums, you,ll see quite a bit of discussion of this and the pros and cons of both methods of editing.
The bottom line is, there are two possible ways to build a notation program: a way on which notes move every time you change what came before them, and a way in which notes stay put until you move them. Finale - the second most popular notation in the world - took the first approach. I think Encore also took that approach. Sibelius - the most popular notation program in the world - took the second approach. Most MIDI editors also take that second approach. Even for people not accustomed to other programs, there are differences in expectations depending on whether you perceive notation as primarily visual (where deleting a note happens to have the effect of changing the time position of the subsequent notes), or primarily aural (where deleting a note would never change subsequent notes). The MuseScore development team had to make a choice on which model to follow, and apparently, they chose the Sibelius method. Which makes just under half the world annoyed, and just over half the world happy. You can't please everyone!
As someone with pretty extensive experience using both types of programs, I can say that while transitioning from one to the other is painful at first as you get used to a different way of working, in the end, both methods work out just fine and end up requring about the same number of clicks on aerate. Certain types of edits are slightly faster in one method, other types slightly faster in the other, but overall, it's a wash (or perhaps a slight win for the Sibelius/MuseScore method). So once you get over the initial shock of MuseScore working differently from your initial expectations, once you "get" how things work, everything runs along quite smoothly.
In reply to I don,t know if the handbook by Marc Sabatella
Thanks, I will see if I can find the tutorial on utube. The only other program I have used is Melody Assistant, which uses the first method you described, thereby my frustration so your explanation was helpful. I've learned how to keep things in line while laying down the notes the first time, it is just the editing that has been making me grit my teeth. lol
And don't get me wrong, I really like this program and don't mean any of this as a rant or complaint against it... just frustrated with my own inability to make it work right in this one area. :)