Can't cut or copy-paste Staff Text elements

• Sep 30, 2020 - 00:49

I've tried using the context menu and cmd-x/cmd-c cmd-v. Cut works, but I am unable to paste these elements anywhere.

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• Sep 30, 2020 - 00:59

You can cut/copy and paste one staff text item at a time. Multiple staff text items don't work. There would be problems deciding what to do if you copied several of them from a measure with 4 1/4 notes and pasted them to beat 1 of a measure with an 8th note followed by 3 1/4 notes and an 8th note. Staff text is attached to a note, chord or rest rather than a specific place in the measure.

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• Oct 2, 2020 - 22:18

It would probably help if you attached your score so we can understand better. if you are copying staff text with no notes, it should work fine to just copy the entire passage. Even if there are notes you don't want copied, go ahead and copy them then delete the notes. Anyhow, almost certainly there is an easy way to get the job done, but we'll be able to assist much better once we see the actual score and understand what you are trying to copy.

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• Sep 30, 2020 - 01:19

Do you know if there is a better way to place lyrics with no associated notes?

I'm working on an arrangement with a spoken word part and googling made it seem like staff text was the way to do it, but if I can't copy-paste the choruses I'm not sure if it's worth the effort.

I have the staff text assigned to whole-note rests.

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• Sep 30, 2020 - 01:31

I would suggest that you put notes showing the rhythm in an unused voice (voice 2 often works since you don't have anything else in the measure). At some point use the filter selector to select only the voice where your notes are and make them invisible by pressing v. Of course use these notes for the lyrics. You can keep the lyrics visible and notes invisible.

Reading about voices and the filter selector might be useful for you.

Edit: one more thing, while you have the notes selected to make them invisible remove the check from Play in the inspector unless you want them to make a noise.

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• Sep 30, 2020 - 18:17

Thanks for the suggestions.

The problem is that the lyrics don't have a rhythm. I guess I can just fill the bars with eighth notes and do the filtering/remove from playback, but that might look even stranger than the way I've been abusing Staff Text.

What I would really love is to have a way to input lyrics that are just associated to a barline or beat instead of a particular note (I'd love to be able to do this on my guitar charts where I don't want to have to write the whole melody in -- just a part of a lyric for reference, like a cue at the end of a long rest). Also, Monster Mash can't be the only song which features a spoken-word arhythmic lead.

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• Sep 30, 2020 - 18:30

The purpose of the rhythm is to line up the notes with the words. You don't want all of the words to be spoken in 3 measures if you have 5 measures of music. This will make a guide for the speaker to sync with the instruments. The rhythms of the instruments and speaker might be quite different.

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• Sep 30, 2020 - 19:02

Well, yeah. That is how musical notation works :)

In this particular case, each line takes about two bars. So I had been copy-pasting each line to a Staff Text element on every other bar. I was trying to avoid a few hours transcribing the rhythm (since it's kind of pointless and I wanted to allow the performers some interpretation), but here I am doing it.

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