lyrics before notes

• Jun 1, 2020 - 18:39

how can i insert the entire text s lyrics for a vocal piece before figuring out the notes?


Comments

MuseScore needs notes to attach the lyrics to. You are welcome to type them into a word processor or whatever if you are anxious to start typing the yrics before you enter the notes, and then paste them in from there, if you are really careful to get the hyphens and underscores perfectly correct. but it's almost certainly not worth the trouble.

Depending on what you mean by "figuring out the notes" - is this a piece you are transcribing from a recording? Just composing? - you might find it useful to enter dummy notes I guess, then repitch them later. but you'll need to get the rhythm, and for most people that's the real holdup.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

i would like to insert all the text as lyrics into a new score before writing the notes (figuring out the notes). i have the lyrics in an email which i can copy and paste. i wrote a dummy note and then sopied and tried to paste the lyrics but only one word appeared. My question here is how to paste all the lyrics into a score before writing out all the notes. is this possible and if so how?

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

As explained above, no, you need a note for each lyrics. So you can enter a whole bunch of C'c, for instance, then enter the lyrics. but if you don't have the rhythm figured out already, this won't help. It will be better to simply wait until you have figured out the notes, there is no advantage in putting the cart before the horse.

Once you have notes, you can paste in the lyrics. Yes, only one syllable appears, because you've only pasted once. Just keeping pressing Ctrl+V and it keeps pasting a syllable at a time.

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

I'm not sure how drinking beer helps (IPA?), but if you don't have the rhythm, no, as we have been explaining, no way to do that. You're welcome to type them into a word processor, but there won't be anything MuseScore can do with them that will be at all useful until you have notes & rhythms to attach them to.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

IPA is as someone else wrote the international phonetic alphabet it is what singers require when text is in a foreign language in my case Etruscan.

i am not sure what you mean about rhythm. i have it set at 4/4; is this what you mean? i also put in a few whole notes per measure and it only would paste one word per measure.

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

He means that you need to enter the notes, one for each syllable, before you paste the lyrics. And since MuseScore is not made to first enter quarter-notes and then later massage them into a different rhythm (as has been discussed multiple times in this forum), but it is possible to change the pitch after you enter the rhythm, you need to enter the correct rhythmic value for each note before it makes sense to add the lyrics. You can fix the pitches later, though.

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

4/4 isn't a rhythm, it is a time signature.

I mean that if the lyrics are supposed to be attached to notes in a specific rhythm like quarter, two eighths, half, you have to enter the notes in that actual rhythm before adding lyrics. Otherwise there won't be any way to make it work.

It's like asking if you can frost your cake before you've baked it or even mixed the batter. No, you can't. It just won't work. Frosting needs a baked cake to adhere to, and lyrics need specific notes in specific rhythms to adhere to. No matter how many times you ask us to explain, the answer will remain the same. You need to enter the notes first, in their correct rhythm, before you can add lyrics.

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

If you change the duration of a single note, then yes, the words stay. And if you cut and paste that note elsewhere, then the word comes along. but you will find this is not a way you can write music in MuseScore, or most other notation programs. It is technically possible but would be hundred times slower, at least, then waiting until you've figured out the rhythms.

As for text coming first, yes, that's all well and good when it comes to your compositional process, but it just does not work to actually enter it that way into MuseScore, or indeed any other notation program I know of. When I bake a cake, I might decide on the icing I want before I decide on the filling. But it just does not work to actually assemble the cake that way. Mixing up the icing in a separate bowl, write your lyrics in a separate program, that's all fine. Do it a day ahead or as early as you like. But then get the cake baked, and the notes entered, before transferring the icing or the words to the cake or song.

In reply to by Philip Ellis Foster

By "the words stay", I mean on any one single note, if you change its duration, the word you had attached to that note stays. To instead of a whole note on beat 1, now you have a quarter note on beat one, and a bunch of rests. You could then change the whole note in the next measure to a quarter note, and the word you had attached to that note would stay too. As mentioned, try it and see!

You could cut and paste that second note to beat two of the first measure and the word comes along. And eventually - in about 100 times as long as it would take it you just entered the rhythms correctly to begin with - you'll have your piece.

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