Dashes in Lyrics that Span Many Bars

• Mar 17, 2013 - 11:48

I have a problem with the way the dashes work between the syllables in lyrics. When the syllable spans many notes, it seems that musescore creates one dash and centers that between the syllables, regardless of how many notes or bars are between those syllables. The problem with that is that sometimes, especially in classical music, there can be many bars between those syllables and a single dash is not enough.

One of the things that I do is transcribe very old manuscripts. I'm currently working on a Scarlatti piece where a single 'a-men' can span 14 bars or more. Sometimes I get a single dash between the syllables, but often it gets confused and I don't even get that, I think partially because they can span multiple pages. When there is so much space between syllables there should be at least 1 or 2 dashes per measure.

Is there something that I'm missing? Or is there something that can be done about this?


Comments

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Thanks for your answer. I have tried that, but some of the words go on so long that even that doesn't work. The underscore starts, but does not continue on to the end. This is especially true over page breaks. In any case, it is not an ideal solution as it is not a standard way to show lyrics in printed music. I publish the music that I produce and therefore want it to look as 'perfect' as possible.

...allows you to write a space and then follow it up with another dash, another [Ctrl] Space, another dash, etc.

[Ctrl] dash followed by Space (normal spacebar) places the dashes under the notes.

Experiment.

I'd recommend a more straightforward workaround - don't enter the syllables with a dashes pr underscores at all, but with spaces as if they were separate words. Then add dashes as desired later using ordinary staff text. Or perhaps some sort of trick where you enter the dash as an actual lyric, or perhaps separating two pseudo-lyrics consisting of ctrl-space only.

Hi, I have another problem releated to dashes in the 452cdc7 nightly build. When I open a score that was created in v1.3 with this nightly, it puts the words on a lower line and the dashes and underscores on a line above. I have been able to narrow it down to being related to style, but I'm not sure why. I have attached a small score of a single measure that shows the problem. Does anyone have any idea what I can do to correct it?

Attachment Size
Lyrics_Test.mscz 2.61 KB

In reply to by robert leleu

Thanks for your answer. It almost worked, but I find in the full score there are specific words or syllables that are mis-aligned. It is not completely consistent in this small score, but I have pasted some more bars into the sample and attached it again. You can see it clearly in the alto line that start at bar 8. I've played around with the settings and the only thing I have seen that comes close is to select the syllable, right-click and to modify the text style, and then change it to unstyled. When I do that it put the syllable back in alignment, but throws the dash way up above the line again. Any other ideas?

Attachment Size
Lyrics_Test.mscz 4.17 KB

In reply to by brianr0922

Ideas I have, but to no avail

1/ deleting a syllable, and typing again doesn't succeed
2/ lassoing the whole line, erasing and typing again is OK
3/ trying to unstyle isn't successful
4/ looking at debugger windows, I saw no clues

Generally speaking the next version needs a thorough revision of «what happens when upgrading files from 1.3»

I think I did not understand
(not news ;-) but I hope you will appreciate the attempt
I see two fonts: - and _, someone made ​​invisible.
I split nunc with synalepha , to play on "u"

Attachment Size
Lyrics Test 1.mscz 4.57 KB

In reply to by Shoichi

Thanks for the effort. When I open this one in v1.3, it looks fine. Actually, the original one looks fine in v1.3 as well. The issue is that in v2.0 the syllables are all mis-aligned. You will have to open it with a nightly build to see the problem.

The only thing that I have found which works so far is to actually delete all of the lyrics, copy and paste all of the notes into a new score, then enter the lyrics again. The score I am working with is 40 pages long so that is not a very good solution, and won't excite very many people when the time comes that they need to upgrade from v1.3 to v2.0. The reason I'm trying to do this in v2.0 is because I need figured bass.

I do have to say how impressed I am with v2.0 now. It has become so much more stable since the last time I played with the nightly builds. It am really looking forward to its release, however we do have to make sure that scores created in earlier versions convert correctly.

Any additional help will be appreciated.

In reply to by robert leleu

I will try that. I will spend time reformatting, but probably still not as much time as if I have to type all the lyrics again. I'd be happier if they just fixed it. :-)

Do you think it is worth reporting as a bug, or is someone probably already working in this are to clean things up before the v2.0 release anyway?

In reply to by brianr0922

I'd assume something as obvious would be fixed, but it doesn't hurt to report it (do search the issue tracker first to be sure it hasn't been already).

Also, FWIW, believe that getting 1.X scores to display properly *is* a high priority. But since so much 2.0 is still in flux, I think they are putting off some of those details a little while longer. Although actually, I also get the sense that things *are* now moving in that direction.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I have figured out what triggers the problem. It is because I changed all the fonts in the style for that score. I always do that because I don't like 'Times New Roman', but that is what caused the issue. To fix it, I went back into the original score loaded the default style, saved it, and then opened it again in v2.0. It opened fine after that and I just went in and changed fonts I wanted in v2.0. I any case, I will look in the issue tracker and report it if it is not already there.

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