Arranger mode
To help the composer to arrange faster it would be great to have a "arranger mode".
Maybe in the way to mark "parts" (or to set internally named markers) in the composition which you could fit together in a specific arrange window.
What I mean ist to get in a fast way a form together like AABCBABA - not patterns for certain instruments like in a sequencer software what would be much to complicated.
Maybe some of the playback problems which can happen when you use repeat barlines and voltas extensively could be solved with that - if they would be inserted in the layout automatically through the arrange window..
Comments
If you look in the Real Book or you are familiar with stage performing of pop music or Jazz it is usual to label parts of a piece of music with expressions like "Chorus", "Vers" , "Intro", "Bridge" and so on. A kind of more flexible markers like Segno.
And a more modern style of D.S. like "jump to" or "go to" or "to the Chorus, Vers" or whatelse. Not only music became modern, also the written practice...
I think, this would be great to have in musescore. Just as an additional idea to the "arranger mode".
In reply to Would be also great to get more modern by musetterich
You can do this via "Text" or by using the rehearsal letter function writing what you want in the box.
In reply to You can do this via "Text" or by xavierjazz
You can also edit the text of DS and other markings.
In reply to You can do this via "Text" or by xavierjazz
That's a useful hint for the printing. Unfortunately this Markers can not be used for the playback because jumping is not possible. And you can not position them everywhere in a bar. So you would not be able to create e.g. a stop command.
@ Mark:
The "fine" does not work properly right now. Also the D.S doesn't if you have several - I have tried this, it is not really reproducible when you change names. When I know more I will post it in the bug report.
Even if it would, it is almost impossible to create with the D.S. function family a more complicated sequence of a song.
I played around with it and it remembers me at the times with the "goto" command in BASIC times and the type of coding which results from that. (I'm not longer in that, so I can not really help you with the coding.) There is also no list where you are able to find other D.S. markers when you open the D.S. markers dialogue.
The D.S. markers also do not allow repetitions because they have no loop and no exclude loop function and no exit form loop (or enter loop when...). So you have to do this manually with the repetition bar lines where you can not say how many times you need a repetition - and then there are the voltas...ohh-ohh...
It is not possible to have a real overview over the song structure at all. So there is a real necessity for that with a visual tool. And it would be helpful that the arranger mode writes the markers, repetitions and voltas in the sheet by itself. Maybe in a classical or in a modern type.
The Music in our time is structured quite differently than classical music. Even modern classical music works with a lot of repetitions of parts.
And often enough you need to hear the structure of a song to understand if there is a need for another Chorus or what else to get a good tension of the song structure. And this you can do with a visual arranger mode window much faster. That's why this is a musical thing, not just a playing around thing.
Playing a song by yourself impedes you to be objective. I think, most of the musicians do agree with me because of their own experience.
That's - by the was - one of the reasons why I prefer now musescore towards manual writing. I love that program!
That is the intention of my feature request. It's for the musical working, not just for featuritis.
In reply to useful hint by musetterich
There is a similar feature request to this in the system - a request to provide markers to jump to in scores.
It was concluded that Rehearsal marks could be used to perform this function if code was written to enable this to happen. The idea was generally well received, but I don't know whether anyone has taken on the job of coding it.
The idea of an arrange window is good, and again Rehearsal marks could be used to drive this.
It will not happen soon, however. Feature freeze is in place for 2.0 and the full-time development team are flat out with getting ready for a release version.
As always the best plan for getting something included in an open source project is to either write the code youself, or hook up with a programmer who can write the code for you :)
In reply to useful hint by musetterich
It's not that modern music is structured differently - it's that people are more apt to try to produce charts with complex roadmaps (such as to fit on one or two pages in a fakebook) as opposed to writing out the full form as would be more common with fully notated music of any era. Which isn't to say the idea of an arrange mode isn't good; I'm just trying to put it in better perspective. And to be clear - what you are asking for is very much a playback-only feature, so hopefully you reLize it isn't likely to be very high priority. Especially since the charts most often written this way are lead sheets that won't playback properly anybow. But again, someday, sure, this would be nice.
Meanwhile, though, while there are bugs that affect some uses if these in the current version (mostly already fixed for the next, I believe) in the behavior of DS, Fine, et al, they *do* work in most cases. Since the primary purpose of MuseScore is notation, I'd focus on getting the chart looking correct and using the correct symbols. Then if for reason you need playback to follow the roadmap and can't wait for 2.0, the standard advice is to export to MIDI and edit it in a sequencer.
Once more, sure, eventually, I think something like this within MuseScore could be nice.